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BY 



LYMAISr ABBOTT 







BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

^\)e WoetMz prejj^ <Eamlinti0e 

1901 



iLibTf^ry of O^;^^;;^ 

Two Copies HEcimo I 



FFB 28 I9ui I ^^^"^ 
FIRST copy ' 



COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY LYMAN ABBOTT 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



PEEFACE 

It is less than half a century since the publica- 
tion of " Essays and Keviews " startled the ortho- 
dox party in England and brought upon its 
authors a storm of criticism. Of those Essays 
perhaps none was more seveiely criticised than 
that of Dr. Frederick Temple, now Archbishop of 
Canterbury, on " The Education of the World," in 
which he affirmed that Kome, Greece, Asia, and 
Judea each contributed something to the growth 
of the future church ; Rome, law ; Greece, science 
and art ; Asia, the spiritual imagination ; Judea, 
the discipline of the human conscience ; in which 
also he traced in the Bible a development of re- 
ligious teaching, from an earlier and cruder to a 
later and better spiritual conception of truth and 
life. Some of his statements he would probably 
himself now modify; but the two fundamental 
principles of his essay, that God's processes of 
education have not been confined to the Hebrew 
race, and that in the Hebrew race they were grad- 
ual, the affirmation of which aroused such fierce 
antagonism in 1860, are accepted as axiomatic by 
a large and increasing body of Biblical scholars in 



IV PREFACE 

1900. This school of Biblical interpretation may 
be termed modern, because it has come into exist- 
ence in England and America during the present 
century ; it may be termed scientific, because in 
the study of the Bible it assumes nothing respect- 
ing the origin, character, and authority of the Bible, 
but expects to determine by such study what are 
its origin, character, and authority ; it may be 
termed literary, because it applies to the study 
of Hebrew literature the same canons of literary 
criticism which are applied by students of other 
world-literature; it may be termed evolutionary, 
because it assumes that the laws, institutions, and 
literature of the ancient Hebrews were a gradual 
development in the life of the nation, not an in- 
stantaneous creation nor a series of instantaneous 
creations. The other school may be termed the 
ancient school, because it prevailed in the church 
from a very ancient period until the latter half 
of the nineteenth century ; the theological school, 
because it assumes as settled that the Bible is a 
revelation from God and consequently possesses 
certain characteristics which it thinks such a reve- 
lation must be assumed to possess ; the traditional 
school, because it accepts as presumptively, if not 
conclusively true, certain opinions respecting the 
date, authorship, and character of different books 
in the Bible which have been traditionally held in 
the church from a very early period. 



PREFACE V 

I accept frankly, fully, and without reserve the 
first of these schools, and have written this book 
for a double purpose : first, to tell the general 
reader what is the spirit and what the methods 
and the general conclusions of this school respect- 
ing the Bible ; and second, to show that these do 
not imperil spiritual faith, — that, on the contrary, 
they enhance the value of the Bible as an instru- 
ment for the cultivation of the spiritual faith. 

What will the New Criticism do with the Bible, 
is a fair question to ask, and the time has come 
to give it at least a partial answer. The believer 
in the New Criticism replies that it has already 
brought back into the Bible some books which had 
almost dropped out of it, such as the Song of 
Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Job ; that it has relieved 
from some ethical difficulties some other books, 
such as Joshua and Leviticus; that it has made 
credible as fiction some passages which had been 
incredible as history, such as the legend of the 
Fall and the satire of Jonah ; that it has made 
practically applicable to our own time other por- 
tions of the Bible, such as the civil laws contained 
in Exodus and Deuteronomy ; that it has given a 
new and deeper spiritual significance to still other 
portions, as to some of the Psalms and to the latter 
half of the Book of Isaiah. The end is not yet ; 
but enough has been accomplished to satisfy the 
believer in the New Criticism that its effect will 



VI PREFACE 

be to destroy that faith in the letter which killeth, 
and to promote that faith in the spirit which mak- 
eth alive ; to lead the Christian to see in the Bible 
a means for the development of faith in the God 
of the Bible, not an object which faith may accept 
in lieu of God's living presence ; to regard the 
Bible, not as a book of philosophy about religion, 
but as a book of religious experiences, the more 
inspiring to the religious life of man because 
frankly recognized as a book simply, naively, di- 
vinely human. 

I am indebted to so many authors of whose 
original investigations I have made free use that I 
attempt no acknowledgment to them here. Kecog- 
nition of my obligations to them will be found in 
the notes scattered through the volume. 

It should be added that in the preparation of 
this volume I have followed the lines and used 
freely the material employed on the course of Sun- 
day evening lectures on the Old Testament given 
in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., in the win- 
ter of 1896-97, and the subsequent course of lec- 
tures given before the Lowell Institute of Boston 
on the same theme, in the winter of 1899-1900; 
but that the book is not a reproduction of either 

course. 

LYIVIAN ABBOTT. 

COBNWAIiL-ON-THE-HuDSON, N. Y. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 

I. The Bible as Literaturb . 

n. Hebrew History .... 

ni. Prehistoric Traditions rewritten 

IV The Book of the Covenant 

V. The Deuteronomic Code 

VI. The Canon Law .... 

VII. Hebrew Fiction .... 

Vin. Some Hebrew Stories retold 

IX. A Drama of Love .... 

X. A Spiritual Tragedy . 

XI. A School of Ethical Philosophy. I. 

XII. A School of Ethical Philosophy. H. 

XIII. A Collection of Lyrics 

XIV. Preachers op Righteousness . 
XV. Preachers of Redemption . 

XVI. The Message of Israel 



1 

27 
52 
81 
116 
129 
164 
177 
201 
229 
263 
287 
305 
328 
352 
372 



THE WRITINGS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
IN THE ORDER OF THEIR COMPOSITION 

WITH AUTHORS AND APPROXIMATE DATES 

In case a book is ascribed to a period rather than a year^ the 
date of the terminus ad quern determines its position in this table. 
In the main Driver's Introduction to the Literature of the Old Tes- 
tament has been followed. By reference to the chronological table 
on pages xi.-xiii. the reader may see under what circumstances 
the various writings were composed. 



Date, b. c. 


Weitings. 


AxrrHOEs (oe Editoes). 


1250 


" Book of the Covenant" (virtually 
as in Exod. xx.-xxiii.) and prob- 
ably other traditional portions of 
the Hexateuch. 


Moses. 


1000 


EarUer psalms, probably. 


David (?) 


940 


Earlier proverbs, probably. 


Solomon (?) 


940-882 


Song of Songs, though by some con- 
sidered as late as 247-221, in the 


Anonymous. 








Greek period. 




874-800 


Proverbs x.-xxii. 16. 


"Wise Men." 


900-750 


( Jehovistic narrative ) ?°e'Tenta'^ 
j Elohistic narrative j teuch 


" J " (a Judaic writer). 
"E" (an Ephraimitic 




(Much uncertainty as to which is 
earlier.) 
Amos. 


writer). 


760-746 


Amos. 


746-734 


Hosea. 


Hosea. 


740-701 


Isaiah i.-xxxix. 


Isaiah. 


700 


I. and 11. Samuel, though in part 
nearly contemporary with the 
events narrated. 


Anonymous. 


700 eirca 


Ruth, though by some considered as 
late as 445. 


Anonymous. 


722-685 


Micah. 


Micah. 


690-640 circa 


Deuteronomy. 


Anonymous. 


626 circa 


Zephaniah. 


Zephaniah. 


667-604 


Nahiun. 


Nahum. 


600 sea. 


Judges. 


Anonymous. 


608-597 


Habakkuk. 


Habakkuk. 


586 


I. and II. Kings. 


Anonymous. 


586 


Jeremiah. 


Jeremiah. 


686 


Tjamentations. 


Jeremiah or contempo- 
raries. 


586 seq. 


Obadiah, though possibly later. 


Obadiah. 


600-570 


Code of Holiness (Lev. xvii.-xxvi.). 


"H." 



THE WRITINGS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The Writings of the Old Testammt — cordinued. 



Date, b. o. 


Wbitin&s. 


AUTHOBS (OB EdITOBS). 


593-570 


EzeMel. 


Ezekiel. 


549 circa 


Isaiah zl.-lxvi. (Second Isaiah). 


Unknown prophet or 
prophets. 


549 circa 


Job. 


Anonymous. 


593-537 


Many psalms. 


Various anonymous 
authors. 


570-530 


Priestly narrative. 


"P." 


570-530 


Leviticus. 


"P." 


520-518 


( Haggai. 

\ Zechariah i.-viii. 


Haggai. 


Zechariah. 


464 circa 


" Malachi " (i. e. " My Messenger ")• 
Pentateuch virtually completed. 


Anonjnnous. 


431 


Anonymous. 




(Joshua not mcluded in the canon 






until later.) 




410 


Joel. (It is maintained by some, 
however, that Joel is as early as 
836.) 

I. and n. Chronicles. 


Joel. 


333 5eg. 


A Levite. 


333 562-. 


( Ezra ) based on authentic me- 
( Nehemiah ) moirs. 


(A Levite, perhaps 
I " the Chronicler." 


332 &eq. 


Esther. 


Anonymous. 


332-306 


The Book of Jonah. 


Anonymous. 


350-300 


Book of Proverbs compiled. 


Anonymous. 


333-280 


Zechariah ix.-xiv. 


Anonymous. 


200 


Ecclesiastes, — though possibly as 
early as 333. 


Pseudonymous. 


516-168 


Many psahns. The Psalter prac- 
tically as at present compiled. 


Anonjmious. 


168 


Daniel. 


Anonymous. 


165 seq. 


Probably some later psalms, during 


Various anonymous 




the Maccabean period. 


authors. 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 



The Chronology of the Old Testament is to a certain extent 
hypothetical ; prior to the Exodus it is wholly so. In preparing 
this table, use has been made of The Religion of Israel, by Karl 
Budde, and the Commentaries on Isaiah and on The Twelve Pro- 
phets, by George Adam Smith. The latter has been accepted and 
followed without question in the period of which he treats, — 
that is, from the disruption of the kingdom, b. c. 940. 



Dates 
B. c. 


Peophbts. 


Events. 


3000 
to 
1250 


Scene of Job and 
Genesis stories. 


1 Patriarchal Age. 




1250 


Book of Covenant. 


Exodus from Egypt; giving of the law on 
Sinai ; foundation of Mosaism. 


Mt. 


1000 


Earlier Psalms 

written. 
Wisdom literature 


David becomes king. 




960 


Solomon. 






begins. Scene of 








Song of Songs 








and Ecclesiastes. 


Division of the kingdom. 






JUDAH. 




940 


Rehoboam. 


Jeroboam I. 










Establishment of calf worship 








in Northern Israel. 




923 




Abijam. 






920 




Asa. 






918 






Nadab. 




915 






Baasha. 




891 






Elah. 




888 






Zimri, Omri. 




876 


■^ f 




A hah. 




874 




Jehosaphat. 






854 


V Elijah. 








853 






' 




Ahaziah, son of Ahab. 




852 










Joram or Jehoram, son 


of 


849 








Jehoram, son of 
Jehosaphat. 


Ahab. 




844 
842 




■EliRha. i 




Ahaziah. 
Athaliah. 






836 








Joash, son of 
Ahaziah. 


Jehu. 




814 










Jehoahaz. 




798 


. 




[ 




Joash, son of Jehoahaz. 





Xll CHRONOLOGY OF TEE OLD TESTAMENT 
Chronology of the Old Testament — continued. 















Dates 


Peophets. 




B.C. 


JUDAH. 


ISBABL. 


797 




Amggnati- 




783 


Jonah (2 Kings xiv 


. 


Jeroboam II. 


778 


25). 


Uzziah (Azariah). 




775-) 
765 j 






Jeroboam reconquers Moab, 






GUead, etc. 


763 






Total eclipse of the sun 


759-) 
745 \ 
743 


Amos. 




(Amos vui. 9). 


r 




Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem. 


,740 




[1 
Hosea. ^ 


Death of King Uz- 






, 


ziah. Jotham sole 
ruler. 




737 






Pekahiah. 


736 




Ahaz. 




735 








Pekah. 


730 








Hoshea. 


727 




Isaiah 
i.-xxTix. 


HezeMah. 




725 

722 






Siege of Samaria. 


or 










Fall of Samaria. 


721 ) 










Captivity of IsraeL 


715 




■Micah.- 






Samaria colonized by Assyr- 
ians. 








701 








Invasion of Judah. 
Deliverance of Jerusalem. 


695 










690 








Manasseh. 


685 ) 










676 




Manasseh tributary to Assyria. 


641 




Amon. 


639 




Josiah. 


627 




Jeremiah appears. 


626 


Zephaniah. 




621 




Book of the law (Deuteronomy) discovered. 
Josiah's reforms begin. 
Passover (2 Kings xxii., xxiii.). 


620 


]Hahakkuk(?). f 




608 




Necho rr. defeats and slays Josiah at Megiddo; 




Nahum (?). 


Judah Egyptian vassal, 
f Jehoahaz. 


602-) 
600 / 




J Jehoia,kim. 


-Jeremiah. 


I Judah vassal of Babylon. 
Jehoiachin. 


597 




Temple plundered ; Zedekiah vassal to Babylon. 
First Great Exile to Babylon. 


593 


EzeMel. 


Jewish revolt against Babylon ; opposed by Jere- 
miah. 


587-) 
586 1 





t)adiah (?) 




Jerusalem taken by 
Exile to Babylon. 


Nebuchadnezzar ; Second Great 



CHRONOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Xlll 
Chronology of the Old Testament — continued. 



Dates 


Pkophets. 


Events. 


B. c. 


JUDAH. 


549 

537 

520 
516 

464 
458 
445 
444 

432 
431 
410 
350- ) 
345 1 

332 

320 
306 
264 
260 1 
160 1 


The "Second Isa- 
iah," also called 
the "Great Un- 
known." (Isaiah 
il.-lxvi.) 

i Zechari'ah i.- f 
( viii. ) 
"Malachi." 

Joel. 

rZechariah is.-) 

xiv. [ 

Book of Jonah. } 

Probable close of 
prophetic canon. 


Release assured to the Jews by the appearance of 
Cyrus against Babylonia. 

The Jews return to Jerusalem from Babylon under 

Zerubabbel and Joshua. 
Restoration of altar and sacrifice. 

Building of the temple by Zerubabbel and Joshua. 
Completion of the temple. 

Ezra arrives at Jerusalem. 
Nehemiah arrives at Jerusalem. 
Establishment of the law. 
Rebuilding of walls. 
Nehemiah's return to Jerusalem. 
Pentateuch virtually completed. 

Insurrection in Judah. Much bloodshed there 

(Jos. Ant. B. xi. ch. 7, § 1). 
Jews subdued by Holof ernes (Book of Judith). 
Many Jews taken to Hyrcania. 

Ptolemy takes Jerusalem (?). 

Egypt's wars for Palestine. 

About this time Greek translation of the Penta- 
teuch. 



LIFE AND LITERATURE OF 
THE ANCIENT HEBREWS 



CHAPTER I 

THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 

The word " Scriptures " means writings ; the 
word " Bible," a transliteration of the Greek word 
"Biblia," means books. In both cases the plural 
form indicates the fact that from the earliest ages 
the Bible has been recognized to be, not a writing or 
book, but a collection of writings or books. When 
the singular form is used in the New Testament, the 
reference is generally, if not always, to a specific 
passage ; when the writer is referring to the whole 
collection of the Old Testament, he uses the plural 
form.^ The Bible is a library of sixty-six different 
books, written by a great number of writers, writ- 
ing for the most part without cooperation. These 
books have for convenience' sake been bound 

^ Illustrations of the use of the singular to denote a particular 
book or passage are afforded by Mark xii. 10 ; xv. 28 ; John vii. 
38 ; X. 35 ; Acts viii. 32 ; Rom. iv. 3 ; Gal. iv. 30 ; 1 Tim. v. 18. 
Illustrations of the use of the plural to indicate all the books of 
the Old Testament are afforded by Matt. xxi. 42 ; xxii. 29 ; xxvi. 
54; Luke xxiv. 27 ; John v. 39 ; Rom. i. 2 ; xv. 4. 



Z LIFE AXn LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

together, but for careful study they must be con- 
sidered separately. This is not equivalent to the 
declaration that there is no other unity in this 
book than the mere mechanical unity made by the 
binder's art. That there is a real ethical and 
spiritual unity will appear all the more clearly 
from a study of them as separate books or writ- 
ings ; but that they are really, not merely formally 
or apparently, independent is the first fact which 
the student of the Bible must recognize. There is 
nothing new or startling in this assertion ; it has 
always been known that the Bible is a collection 
of independent writings by different authors ; but 
modern criticism is at once using this fact in its 
study of the Bible, and laying emphasis upon it as 
the result and by the methods of its study. 

Scientific investigation of any subject may be 
said to consist of the two correlative processes of 
analysis and synthesis. By the first the object is 
separated into its several parts ; by the second it 
is put together again into an organic whole. The 
Bible has always been subjected to these processes ; 
but in the older form of study it was to a consider- 
able extent regarded as one book, by one divine 
author, though divided into separate books, chap- 
ters, and verses for convenience of study. The 
analysis then consisted in this separation of the 
one book into separate books, chapters, and verses, 
and was a mechanical rather than a literary ana- 
lysis ; the synthesis consisted in putting these 
verses together in new relations for the purpose 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 3 

of constructing a system of theology or perhaps of 
ethics. In this synthetic process little or no atten- 
tion was paid to the fact that the Bible is a 
collection of books written by different authors, at 
different times, under different circumstances, for 
different purposes, and possessing different degrees 
of spiritual development. Sometimes the text was 
wrested from its context, and made to bear a 
meaning which it certainly did not bear in the 
mind of the original writer, as in the common 
citation of the verse, " As a tree falls, so shall it 
lie," cited as a proof-text against the possibility of 
a future probation ; ^ sometimes it was used to sup- 
port a doctrine the opposite of that intended by 
the author, as in the not infrequent citation of 
the text, "Touch not, taste not, handle not," as 
authority for total abstinence, when in the original 
it is quoted by Paul from ascetic teachers only for 
the purpose of condemning it, and the philosophy 
which he supposes it to represent.^ Occasionally 

^ " It may be noted, as an illustration of the way in -whieli the 
after-thoughts of theology have worked their way into the inter- 
pretation of Scripture, that the latter clause has been expounded 
as meaning that the state in which men chance to be when death 
comes on them is unalterable, that there is ' no repentance in the 
grave.' So far as it expresses the general truth that our efforts 
to alter the character of others for the better must cease when the 
man dies, that when the tree falls to south or north, towards the 
region of light or that of darkness, we, who are still on the earth, 
cannot prune, or dig about, or dung it (Luke xiii. 8), the inference 
may be legitimate enough, but it is clear that it is not that 
thought which was prominent in the mind of the writer." The 
Cambridge Bible, Ecclesiastes, p. 206. 

2 Col. ii. 21. See Alford's Greek Testament and T. K. Ab- 
bott's International Critical Commentary/. 



4 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

this use of texts regardless of their authorship and 
original intent led to amusing results. Many years 
ago, when this use of the Bible was more common 
than it is now, a Judge of the Supreme Court of 
New York said in a legal decision, " We have the 
highest possible authority for saying 'Skin for 
skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his 
life.' " The next morning the New York " Herald " 
commented on this opinion substantially as follows : 
" We find that it was the devil who said, ' Skin for 
skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his 
life : ' now we know who it is that our Supreme 
Court Judges regard as the highest possible 
authority." 

But this textual use of the Bible was by no 
means confined to misuses such as these. One has 
only to turn to any theological sermon of one of 
the older New England divines, such as Jonathan 
Edwards or Nathaniel Emmons, or to the collection 
of texts accumulated in footnotes in support of the 
articles of the Westminster Confession of Faith, 
or in such a Roman Catholic collection as "The 
Divine Armory of Holy Scripture," to see that in 
this older method of Bible use no attempt was 
made to consider the comparative weight, the local 
meaning, or the original application of Scripture 
texts; all were treated as of e^ual value, and 
applied regardless of their literary significance and 
human authorship.^ 

^ Thus the Divine Armory cites as authority for " the noble 
lineage, immaculate conception, and virginity" of the Virgin 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 5 

And such use of Scripture was measurably justi- 
fied by the conception which the fathers more or 
less consciously entertained concerning the Bible 
as one book, whose real author was God, though it 
was written by many human amanuenses. In 
studying the statutes of a State we do not inquire 
who reported them, nor even what legislator pro- 
posed their enactment; for the authority of the 
statute is in the legislature, not in the reporter 
nor in the individual legislator. In studying the 
decisions of a court, all we care to know about 
the reporter is that he has given a fairly correct 
report of the decision ; even the personality of the 
individual judge who wrote the opinion is a matter 
of wholly secondary significance ; for the authority 
rests in the court whose decision is announced, not 
in the judge who announces it nor in the reporter 
who records it. Somewhat similarly, the character 
and circumstances of the individual writer in the 
Bible were not improperly ignored by those who 
held that he was only an amanuensis or reporter, 
or at least quasi private secretary, who recorded, 
though to a certain extent in his own language, the 
authoritative and inerrant, if not absolutely verbally 
dictated, utterances of an omniscient God. It was 
even sometimes affirmed that we can only think in 

Mary, the verse from the Song- of Songs : " Thou art all fair, O 
my love, and there is no spot in thee ; " and the Westminster 
Confession of Faith cites in support of the doctrine that the hopes 
of the unregenerate are illusory and vain the argument of Bil- 
dad that Job must have been a great sinner or his prosperity 
would not have come to naught (Job viii. 13, 14). 



6 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

language, and therefore, if the thoughts of the 
writers were inspired, the words must have been 
dictated.^ Those who entertained this conception 
of the Bible paid little or no attention to the 
specific character of the different writers or the 
different writings. No account, for example, was 
made of the fact that the Book of Job is largely a 
hot debate between disputants who take absolutely 
antagonistic views of the same problem ; their 
utterances were quoted as of equal authority. A 
quotation from an old poem affirming that the sun 
and moon stood still to prolong the victory of 
Joshua and make more overwhelming the defeat 
of his enemies was regarded as scientifically author- 

^ " Calovius was the author of the theory -which is usually de- 
nominated the Orthodox Protestant theory. According' to him, 
inspiration is the form which revelation assumes, and nothing 
exists in the Scriptures which was not divinely suggested and 
inspired (divinitus suggestum et inspiratum). Quenstedt, Baier, 
Hollaz, and others followed, affirming that the writers were de- 
pendent upon the Spirit for their very words, and denying that 
there were any solecisms in the New Testament. The Buxtorfs 
extended inspiration to the vowel-points of the Old Testament. 
This view was adopted in the Formula Cons. Helv., and Gisbert 
Voetius extended inspiration to the very punctuation. This doe- 
trine was an absolute novelty." Beligious Encyclopedia, Schaff- 
Herzog, article Inspiration. Compare also article on Inspiration 
in Encyclopcedia Britannica. These extreme views were not, how- 
ever, those of the most eminent of either the Roman Catholic or 
the Protestant divines ; the Westminster Confession of Faith 
implies a spiritual rather than a literalistic doctrine of inspiration 
in its declaration (chapter i., § 5), "our full persuasion and as- 
surance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is 
from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and 
■with the word in our hearts." 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 1 

itative, to be reconciled i£ possible with the postu- 
lates of modern science, but, whether reconciled or 
not, to be accepted.^ Such inconsistencies in the 
historical narratives as the statement in one account 
of the Deluge that the animals went by twos into 
the ark, and in another that some of them went by 
sevens,^ or in the Book of Samuel that Jehovah 
moved David to number Israel, and in the Book of 
Chronicles that Satan tempted him,^ it was thought 
necessary to harmonize on the theory that both 
statements proceeded from one infallible author 
and were recorded by infallible penmen. Inter- 

1 " ' The Book of Jasher * was in all probability a collection, 
rhythmical in form and poetical in diction, of various pieces 
celebrating the heroes of the Hebrew nation and their achieve- 
ments." The Cambridge Bible, Josh. x. 13. Compare The Bible 
Commentary on the same. Compare also the Polychrome Bible, 
Book of Joshua, p. 72. Of this passage (Josh. x. 12, 13) it 
says : " The quotation is poetic and figurative, as in the Song of 
Deborah (Judg. v. 20), the stars fought against Sisera; it seems, 
however, to have been misunderstood and taken literally by sub- 
sequent editors. It means simply : May God grant us victory 
before the sun sets. Similarly Agamemnon prays to Zeus that the 
sun may not set before Priam's dwelling is overthrown (II. 2, 
413 ff.). At the bidding of Athene the sunset was delayed for 
the sake of Ulysses (Od. 23, 241 ff.), and, on another occasion, 
hastened at the command of Hera, in order to save the Greeks 
(D. 18, 239 &.). Of course, if there were an adequate motive for 
a miracle here, or any appreciable evidence that a miracle took 
place, scientific objections would be irrelevant, because, from the 
very idea of a miracle, its physical antecedents and mechanism 
are unintelligible and cannot be discussed. But there is no reason 
to suppose that the narrative originally stated that a miracle 
happened." 

2 Compare Gen. vi. 20, and vii. 9, with Gen. vii. 2, 3. 
^ 2 Sam. xxiv. 1 ; 1 Chron. xxi. 1. 



8 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

pretations of history found in the Bible which 
attributed the wholesale massacre of the Canaanite 
to Jehovah's direct command,^ expressions con- 
tained in it of the natural feeling of the persecuted 
exiles crying out to Jehovah for vengeance on 
cruel Babylon,^ it was deemed necessary to make 
congruous with the command of Christ, "But I 
say unto you, Love your enemies," since both were 
assumed to have emanated equally directly from 
the same divine Author.^ 

The modern student of the Bible frankly recog- 
nizes these self-contradictions in the Bible, and they 
do not trouble him, because they do not militate 

^ Josh. viii. 2 ; X. 40. 

2 Ps. cxxxvii. 8, 9. Stanley in his History of the Jeunsh Church 
treals of the apparent contradiction between certain teachings in 
the Old Testament and others in the New Testament thus : 
" That this inferiority of the Old Dispensation was an acknow- 
ledged element in the ' gradualness and partialness ' of Revela- 
tion, ineyitably flows from the definition of Revelation as given 
by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ' God who in sundry 
times and in divers manners spake in times past to our fathers ' ' ' 
(p. 280), and refers to Chrysostom's Homily on 1 Cor. ch. xiii., 
•where he says, quoting Ps. cxxxix. 21, 22 : " Now because he has 
brought us to a more entire self-command ... he bids us rather 
admit and soothe them. . . . We must not hate but pity." This 
is an application of the evolutionary philosophy long before 
evolution was recognized as a philosophy. 

^ Much ingenuity has been displayed in the endeavor to recon- 
cile the apparent contradictions in the Bible between different 
authors, or between Biblical authors and scientific conclusions, or 
the moral consensus of mankind. Some treatises of considerable 
ability have been devoted wholly to this task. See, for example, 
J. W. Haley's An Examination of the Alleged Discrepancies of the 
Bible (1873), and Robert Tuck's A Handbook if Biblical Difficul- 
ties, 2 vols. (1886). 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 9 

against his conception of the inspiration of the 
writers or the character and authority of their writ- 
ings. The differences between the old view and the 
new view are radical and even revolutionary, and 
the advocates of the new method seem to me mis- 
taken when, to guard against the fears of the timid, 
they endeavor to minimize the differences between 
the new and the old. The question between the 
two is not merely whether there are some errors in 
the science or history of the Bible, still less whether 
there were any in the original autographs, long 
since lost. The point of view, the methods of study, 
the theological assumptions which underlie that 
study, and the results attained, differ, and differ 
very widely. It is a great deal better to recognize 
these differences frankly than to attempt to conceal 
them either from others or from ourselves. 

By the modern school the method of dividing the 
Bible into a series of texts, treating them all as of 
equal authority and weight, because equally words 
of God, and constructing a system of theology by 
piecing them together, is not only abandoned as 
antiquated ; it is frankly condemned as unscientific 
and erroneous. A new method is proposed to take 
its place ; this new method goes by the infelicitous 
title of the " Higher Criticism." I call it infelici- 
tous because, while to scholars its meaning is per- 
fectly clear, to many people it is not, for the simple 
reason that it is a technical term, and in it the 
words are used in a technical and non-popular sense. 
To the non-scientific reader criticism of anything 



10 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

signifies judgment of it, and generally such judg- 
ment as discovers and exliibits its imperfections ; 
to such the phrase " higher criticism " suggests a 
superior kind of judgment of the Bible, and con- 
notes a kind of spiritual egotism in the higher critic. 
To the scientific student the word " criticism " 
applied to the Bible means " inquiry into the origin, 
history, authenticity, character, etc., of the literary 
documents " ^ of which it is composed. Lower criti- 
cism means such inquiry into the text or into par- 
ticular texts, and is equivalent to textual criticism ; 
higher criticism means inquiry into the documents 
as a whole, their integrity, authenticity, credibility, 
authorship, circumstances of their composition, and 
the like, and is equivalent to literary criticism.^ 
Applied to the study of Shakespeare, the question. 
Is the disputed line to be read " To the manner 
born " or " To the manor born " ? would belong to 
lower criticism ; the question, how largely the son- 
nets of Shakespeare are really autobiographical in 
their character, how largely they are dramatic im- 
personations of sentiment, would belong to higher 

1 Century Dictionarg. 

2 Higher Criticism is sometimes called pHlosophical study of 
the Bible. " It is named the Higher Criticism because it is higher 
in its order and in its work than the Lower or Textual Criticism. 
This department of criticism has lived and worked xmder this name 
for more than a century. . . . The Higher Criticism devotes its 
attention to the literary features of the Bible. It has four great 
questions to answer : As to the integrity of the writings ; as to the 
authenticity of the writings ; as to literary features ; as to the 
credibility of the writings." C. A. Briggs, D. D., The Study of 
Holy Scripture, pp. 92 and 95. 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 11 

criticism. It would be a mistake to suppose that 
either lower criticism or higher criticism is peculiar 
to the present half -century; there have always been 
both a textual and a literary study of the Bible, 
both a lower and a higher criticism ; but in our time 
new emphasis has been attached and new impor- 
tance given to the literary study, or higher criti- 
cism. In these articles I shall discard technical 
expressions, because the book is not intended pri- 
marily for technical students ; I shall, therefore, 
speak of the literary study, rather than of the 
higher criticism, of the Bible. 

Employing a new method in its study of the Bible, 
the new school approaches this study with a differ- 
ent theological assumption from that of the old 
school. The difference is not easily defined ; but 
it is all the more important because it is rather spir- 
itual than philosophical, and therefore transcends 
exact definition. The old theology laid emphasis 
on what is called the transcendence of God; the 
new theology on his immanence. The old theology 
regarded God as apart from matter, and creating 
the world as an architect or builder by mechanical 
processes ; as apart from nature, and directing it as 
an engineer his engine ; as apart from humanity, 
and ruling over his subjects as a king; as apart 
from man, and mysteriously joined to him in the 
incarnation of the God-man. The new theology 
conceives of God as dwelling in matter, shaping it 
as the soul shapes the body ; dwelling in nature, 
and ruling it as the soul rules the body ; dwelling 



k 



12 LIFH AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

in man, and controlling him less by law and power 
than by influence, less as a king rules his subjects 
than as a father controls his loyal son ; entering 
into man in the incarnation, and becoming God 
manifest in the flesh, Christ being the God-in-man 
rather than the God-and-man.^ This theological 
point of view applied to the Bible changes our con- 
ception of inspiration and revelation. The new view 
believes in revelation, but conceives it less as a dis- 
closing of an external God to man than as an unveil- 
ing of God in human experience; it believes in 
inspiration, but it conceives of inspiration less as an 
addition to human experience of something super- 
human than as a transfusion of human experience 
by a Spirit who is superhuman. It consequently 
regards the Bible, not so much an addition to human 
knowledge of certain truths before unknown if 
not unknowable, as the record of a spiritual con- 
sciousness in certain souls, which is possible, in vary- 
ing degree, to the souls of all. Taking as its defini- 
tion of religion " the life of God in the soul of man," 
it regards the Bible as a book of religion rather than 
as a book about religion ; that is, as the transcrip- 
tion of the experiences of men who were conscious 
of the life of God in their times, their nation, and 
their own souls. This consciousness of God in them- 
selves constituted their inspiration ; and in this con- 
sciousness of God in their own souls God was 

^ For an excellent outworking of this doctrine of the divine im- 
manence as applied to all branches of theology see The Religion of 
To-morrow, by Frank Crane. 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 13 

revealed to them. Just in so far as this conscious- 
ness of God awakens a corresponding consciousness 
of God in us, is it a revelation of God to us, and no 
further. The Bible is, therefore, to be conceived, 
not as an unnaturally divine book, nor as a book 
partly divine and partly human ; it is a divine-in- 
human book, and to us all the more divine because 
human. Through it God is revealed to our con- 
sciousness, because in it God is seen revealed in the 
consciousness of its writers. We see God in it, not 
apart from human consciousness, but in human con- 
sciousness, not as he is in himself, but as he was 
seen, felt, realized, by holy men. As the supreme 
revelation of God to man in life is God dwelling in 
man in the incarnation, so the supreme revelation 
of God to man in literature is God dwelling in the 
writers of the books which constitute the literature. 
When, therefore, he who is accustomed to the 
conception of an infallible and inerrant book asks 
the modern student how, on this conception of the 
Bible as a divine-in-human book, it is possible to 
separate the divine from the human, and tell what is 
divine and what human, the answer is that it is no 
more possible to make such a separation in the Bible 
than it is to separate the divine from the human in 
Christ. The Bible is not a composite of divine gold 
mixed with human alloy, which we must somehow 
separate from the alloy in order to get a standard 
degree of fineness. It is rather like oxygen mixed 
with nitrogen in the air that we may better breathe 
it. What reader can tell how much of his thinking 



14 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

is inspired by Carlyle, how mucli by Robertson, how 
much by Thackeray, how much by Browning ? The 
more thoroughly he has thought over what he has 
read, and the more he has made that thought his 
own, the less he can distinguish the sources and the 
inspiration o£ his thinking. So the closer these 
holy men were to God, the less possible it was for 
them to tell what of their thoughts were divine in 
source and what were their own ; still less can we 
make such a discrimination. Nor is it desirable to 
do so. What we need is not merely God, but God 
in us ; and therefore a book which gives us a record 
of the experiences of men in whom God dwelt is a 
more valuable book to conduct us to God than a 
book which should give us, were such a book possi- 
ble, a representation of God apart from men. The 
fact that the writers were men of like passions as 
we ourselves are, that they saw in part and prophe- 
sied in part, and saw as in a glass darkly,^ makes 
them the better interpreters of the life of God to us, 
in our partialism and our imperfection. This col- 
lection of books is a record of the experiences of 
men who had in larger or lesser degree the con- 
sciousness of God dwelling in them. It is a record 
of religious experience, and that is a record of the 
life of God in the soul of man ; not of the life of 
God only, but of the life of God in the soul of man ; 
and the man in whom God dwells is quite as essen- 
tial to the religious revelation as the God who dwells 
in him, because religion is the combination of the 
two, God and man, dwelling together. 

1 1 Cor. xiii. 9, 12. 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 15 

It does not, therefore, disturb us in the least to 
find human error and imperfection in the collection. 
We find, and we should expect to find, writers hold- 
ing the scientific opinions, of their times, thinking 
the world was flat ; that the province in which they 
lived was nearly the whole of it ; that the Mediter- 
ranean was the " Great Sea " ; that the stars and 
sun and moon revolved around the earth on which 
they lived, and were made simply to light it. We 
find them absolutely ignorant of the laws of nature ; 
never, therefore, even entertaining the question 
whether laws of nature were violated or not, but 
looking at all phenomena with childlike interest, 
as little children look at such phenomena now. 
We find them with as little ability to exercise criti- 
cal historical judgment as to exercise scientific 
judgment, accepting without criticism the legends 
that come down to them, and seeking in them for 
some vision or some modification of their vision of 
God in his world. We find them from the first 
believing that God is a righteous God, and de- 
mands righteousness of his children ; but in the 
earlier stages not knowing what righteousness is, 
and growing to a broader and better conception of 
righteousness as the race grows in age and in ex- 
perience. And to find such errors, scientific, his- 
torical, philosophic, in this record of the religious 
experience of a race, does not disturb in the least 
our faith that the collection contains a revelation 
of God in man and to man.^ 

^ See chapter ii., " The Evolution of the Bible," in my Evolution 



16 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

With this radical change in our theological con- 
ception comes a change scarcely less radical in our 
process of analysis and synthesis. We study the 
Bible no longer by texts ; we analyze it no longer 
into texts ; we no longer even print it in texts, or 
we indicate the texts by numbers in the margin, as 
in the Revised Version. We study the Bible by 
books and by authors ; we compare, not text with 
text, but author with author. We endeavor to 
ascertain the character of the author, his tempera- 
ment, the time in which he lived, the audience to 
which he spoke, the immediate purpose which ani- 
mated him. Single texts are no longer conclusive ; 
they are valuable just in the measure in which they 
are an interpretation of what a devout soul thought 
under the inspiration of God about the truth of 
God. We no more go to the Bible for a text to 
settle for us what is the truth, or what the teach- 
ing of the Bible, or what even the teaching of the 
individual writer, than we go to a single sentence 
in a speech of Daniel Webster to settle for us what 
is his teaching. We measure Paul by entire Epis- 
tles ; the Psalmist by an entire Psalm ; each writer 
by the totality of his writing. In brief, we apply 
to this collection of writings the same methods of 
critical study which we apply to any other, sure 
that the best method of getting at the thought of 
God is to get at the life of the man in whom he 
dwelt and whose experience he inspired.^ 

of Christianity, for some illustrations of the principle embodied in 
this paragraph. 

1 Excellent illustrations of the fruit of this method of study are 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 17 

This method of study by literary, not textual, 
analysis, founded on the theological assumption 
that God's revelation to man is in and through a 
human experience, gives, of course, very different 
results from the former method. Subjecting this 
book to this literary analysis, we find it, not a 
book, but a collection of writings.^ If we suppose, 
as I do, that the oldest book of the Bible, the Book 
of the Covenant,^ is, as to its essential contents, 
though not as to its literary form, as old as Moses, 
say about b. c. 1250, and that the Epistles of John 
are probably the latest books of the Bible, and 
were written about the close of the first century, 
then a period of thirteen or fourteen centuries 
elapsed between the earliest and the latest of these 
writings ^ ; and if we can ascertain even approxi- 

fnmished by Prof. J. F. Genung's monograph on Job, The JEpic of 
the Inner Life ; by Dr. W. E. Griffis's monograph on the Song of 
Songs, The Lily among Thorns ; and by some of the volumes of 
The Expositor's Bible, especially that of Dr. Samuel Cox on The 
Book of Ecclesiastes and that of Dr. George Adam Smith on The 
Book of Isaiah. 

1 Professor Moulton's Modern Reader'' s Bible (The Maemillan 
Company) represents this fact to the eye by printing the Bible in 
separate volumes, each of them arranged, as far as practicable, 
as a complete volume and in the literary form which he supposes 
■would characterize it, in order to bring out its true literary char- 
acter. 

2 Exod. XX. 1-xxiv. 7. See post, chapter iv., " The Political 
Institutions of the Hebrews." 

^ If modem scholars are correct in attributing the second epis- 
tle of Peter to the middle or late part of the second century (see 
A. C. McGiffert's Apostolic Age, pp. 602, 603) the period covered 
by the Biblical writings must be extended. 



18 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

mately the date of tlie intermediate writings, we 
can trace the rise and progress of that conscious 
life of God in the soul of man which constitutes 
the essence of religion. Thus the Bible becomes 
to us what I may call a record of the biology of 
religion. We further find in this volume an illus- 
tration of almost every type of literature, at least 
what appears so to be, and our theological assump- 
tion does not require us to suppose that the appear- 
ances are deceptive. We find ancient legends, 
constitutional law, political statutes, ecclesiastical 
law, history, epic poetry, lyric poetry, gnomic 
poetry, drama, folklore, fiction, ethical culture, 
oratory — both secular and spiritual — biography, 
philosophy — both rational and mystical — and 
dream literature. 

But the student does not stop in his analytical 
study of this Hebrew anthology with this result. 
With the aid of scholars he pursues the analysis 
further. He analyzes the historical books, and by 
the analysis discovers in them clear traces of the 
materials which the historian employed. He traces 
in the law books the development of political insti- 
tutions from their earlier and simpler to their later 
and more complex form. He discovers in the his- 
tory of the Hebrew Church the same antagonism 
between simplicity and elaborateness of ritual which 
characterizes the Church of the Middle Ages, and 
the same consciousness of God in the ancient Puri- 
tan and the ancient sacerdotalist which he can, if 
he will, discern in both the analogous types of a 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 19 

later time. He discovers evidences of many authors 
of different temperaments in the collection of lyrics 
brought together under the general title of the 
Psalms. He becomes convinced that the Book of 
Proverbs is not a book by a single royal author, 
but a collection of apothegms gathered from many 
sources and representing the practical experience 
of the ancient Hebrew people. He discovers evi- 
dence that the writings of a school of preachers 
have sometimes been grouped together under the 
general title of one of their number. These and 
kindred facts which his analysis brings to light very 
materially modify the interpretations which are to 
be given to these different writings. For no one 
reads fiction as he reads philosophy, or poetry as 
he reads law, or dream literature as he reads his- 
tory. Nor does he expect science in an unscien- 
tific age, nor philosophy from a purely practical 
age, nor Christian ethics in a barbaric age, nor the 
highest and purest spiritual experiences before the 
spiritual nature of man has received its later devel- 
opments. 

I believe that the final result of this analysis will 
be to extend the use of the Bible, and to enhance 
affection and reverence for it ; that when we dis- 
cover God interpreted in the consciousness of im- 
perfect men like ourselves, we shall find that he is 
nearer to us than we thought he was ; and when 
every man finds in this library an interpretation of 
this God-consciousness in that form of literature 
which most appeals to him, its influence will be 



20 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

both strengthened and diffused. The child will 
find it in the story, the youth in the romance and 
the drama, the lawyer in the political institutions, 
the ecclesiastic in the canons, the moralist in the 
apothegms, the rationalist in the philosophy, the 
mystic in the visions, the man of action in the his- 
tory, and all in the supreme biography which con- 
stitutes the natural climax of the whole collection. 
This is perhaps to anticipate the conclusion to 
which I hope in this volume to conduct such read- 
ers as have an inclination to read it to the end. 
Suffice it to say here that the synthesis of the 
modern study differs as much from that of the 
ancient method as does the analysis which I have 
here described from that of the older method. 
The modern student can no longer take texts from 
Genesis, Leviticus, Kings, Job, the Song of Songs, 
Isaiah, and Komans, and, ignoring the fact that 
the first book is one of ancient tradition, the second 
a book of ecclesiastical canons, the third a political 
history, the fourth an epic poem, the fifth a drama, 
the sixth a collection of odes and orations, and the 
seventh an epistolary treatise on theology, treat 
them as though they are all to be interpreted in the 
same fashion, and can be combined in a textual 
mosaic which should be accepted as a standard in 
theology. But he can study the writings of the 
various authors, ascertain the thought and catch 
the spirit of each, and, comparing them with one 
another, learn in what they agree and in what they 
differ. I believe that such a synthesis will make 



TEE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 21 

it clear that these men of dissimilar epochs, condi- 
tions, and temperaments, widely as they differ, not 
only in their form of expression, but in their mode 
of thought, agree in their essential spirit, and, in 
so far, in their essential religious message. If out 
of such a synthesis there emerges a system of 
theology not so definite as that framed by the 
old method, I believe it wiU be less scholastic and 
more spiritual. If so, the gain will far counter- 
balance any possible loss. 

There is one objection, if not to the literary 
method of study here defined and defended, at 
least to the results here indicated and summarized, 
which ought to be frankly stated and as frankly 
met. 

The Old Testament existed, substantially in the 
form in which we now possess it, certainly two, 
probably three, and perhaps four centuries prior 
to the time of Christ, and there was a practically 
uniform tradition existing in the time of Christ 
respecting the date and authorship of most of 
these books. It was almost universally agreed 
among the Hebrew rabbis at that time that Moses 
wrote the whole of the Pentateuch ; that Joshua 
wrote the Book of Joshua ; that Samuel wrote the 
Books of Samuel, Esther, and Judges ; the Books 
of Kings and Chronicles were conceded to be writ- 
ten by unknown authors ; Job was thought to be 
written by Moses; the great majority of the 
Psalms by David or by men of his age ; the great 
majority of the Proverbs, the whole of Ecclesi- 



22 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

astes, and the Song of Songs by Solomon ; Daniel 
by a propbet bearing that name; Isaiah by the 
son of Amoz ; and the other prophets by the 
writers whose names they bear. The one possible 
exception to this was the Book of Jonah, which 
was regarded by some Hebrew scholars from a 
very early period as not being written by Jonah 
and as not being historical. The traditionalist, 
that is, he who bases his conclusions concerning 
Scripture upon tradition, considers that this long- 
lived belief substantially settles the question of 
date and authorship. He says that here is a tradi- 
tion which has existed for two thousand years 
practically undisputed. It is true that it has been 
in some of its parts denied. Luther doubted it ; 
Calvin denied it in part ; but, on the whole, it has 
been accepted down to about the year 1750 with 
very little discussion. This undisputed tradition, 
the traditionalist thinks, establishes the date and 
authorship of these books ; and he feels this the 
more strongly because he thinks these traditions 
were accepted and indorsed by Paul and by Jesus 
Christ, since they both cited from the books of 
Moses and from the different prophets without 
any intimation that these books were not written 
by the persons whose names they bear.^ 

To this tradition the literary student, or higher 
critic, pays little attention ; the most conservative 
of his class is not stopped by it, the more radical 

^ For a full statement of this argument see The Old Testa- 
ment under Fire, by A. J. F. Behrends, D. D., chap. iii. 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 23 

disregards it altogether, for a variety of reasons. 
The fact that the tradition was for so long a time 
undisputed deprives it of weight. A tradition is 
of little scientific value until it has been subjected 
to careful investigation ; and this tradition was 
never investigated until about a hundred and fifty 
years ago. It is, therefore, as a tradition, entitled 
to no more consideration than the Ptolemaic tradi- 
tion in astronomy, or the long undisputed but now 
wholly discarded traditions respecting the early 
history of Greece and Rome. This particular tra- 
dition is of the less value because of the age in 
which it first appeared. If we trace it back to the 
fourth century before Christ, its birth is a thousand 
years after the time of Moses. The scientific 
thinker can see no reason for accrediting men who 
lived a thousand years after Moses with any better 
facilities for determining the authorship of their 
sacred books than have the scholars of our own 
time. A tradition concerning the authorship of a 
volume written ten, five, or even two centuries 
before the tradition first appears is not, to the sci- 
entific scholar, of any considerable value. If we 
could suppose that at that time the question was 
carefully studied by intelligent and unprejudiced 
scholars, some weight might be given to their con- 
clusions. But this tradition had its rise among a 
school of rabbis whose methods were as far re- 
moved as possible from those of a rational and 
unprejudiced investigator. Paul, reared in the 
rabbinical school, has treated these traditions with 



24 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

no respect, saying that when the rabbis read the 
law in their synagogues they had a veil over the 
face.i Christ spoke of them with even greater 
severity, saying that by their traditions the rabbis 
had made the word of God of none effect, and tell- 
ing his disciples that their interpretations of the 
Old Testament showed them to be fools and blind .^ 
Theologians who soberly maintained that the law 
existed two thousand years before the creation, 
and that Jehovah himself studied it in the heavens 
with his holy angels,^ cannot be regarded as au- 
thority on questions of literature by Christian 
scholars in this close of the nineteenth century. 

Nor does Christ give to this Jewish tradition any 
endorsement. There is nothing inconsistent with a 
rational recognition of his divine character in the 
opinion that he shared on these questions the com- 
mon impressions of his time. But if he did, he 
never gave to those impressions the weight of his 
authority. He never undertook to speak with au- 
thority on the question of the date or authorship of 
Biblical books. He never makes Biblical criticism 
the subject of his teaching. He never bases his au- 
thority on that of the authors of the Biblical books. 
Sometimes he sets their authority aside, as in the 
Sermon on the Mount. Sometimes he cites their 
own Scriptures against his critics, in much the same 

1 2 Cor. iii. 15. 2 Matt, xxiii. 17 ; Mark vii. 13. 

^ For illustrations of the spirit of traditionalism in the time of 
Christ see Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus, Book I. chaps, 
vii. and viii. 



THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE 25 

spirit as that in which Paul, speaking in Athens, 
cites " certain of your own poets." It is true that 
he often refers to these books, and when he does, 
refers to them by the name by which they were 
known in his time ; but such a reference does not 
even indicate his opinion as to their authorship, 
still less does it indicate any intention on his part 
to make an utterance on the subject which loyalty 
to him must regard as final. No popular writer 
or speaker would hesitate to refer to ^sop's Fables, 
although he might agree with the conclusion of 
modern scholarship that ^sop did not write them, 
but only gathered together the collection which 
bears his name from a mass of fables current 
among the Greeks of his time.^ 

I invite the reader, then, who will follow me 
further in this volume to follow me in the spirit of 
this Introduction ; to imagine that there stands 
before him on the table, not a book, but a library 
of sixty-six different books, which represent the 
literature of a peculiar people, extending over a 
period of twelve hundred years or more, and are a 
survival of the fittest, out of a much larger number 

^ "His [Christ's] allusions to the Old Testament books and 
narratives are sometimes made a touchstone for determining' ethi- 
cal and historical questions, which were as foreign to the thought 
of his time as were the researches of anthropology or modern 
science. If his assertion ' Moses wrote ' discredits modern criti- 
cism, does not his affirmation that the sun rises destroy modern 
astronomy ? " G. B. Stevens, D. D., The Theology of the New 
Testament, p. 77. Compare Delitzsch on Genesis : Introduction, 
p. 21. 



26 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBEREW8 

which have not survived ; ^ to remember that this 
library has produced a profound moral impression 
on all that portion of the human race who have 
ever known it ; to believe, therefore, that this col- 
lection is well worth his careful study ; to assume, 
however, that it is to be studied, not as a collec- 
tion of texts, out of which, by a process of mosaic 
work, a theology may be constructed, but as a col- 
lection of vital literature, out of which, by a course 
of literary study, life may be promoted and truth 
made both more apparent and more effective ; and 
to enter on the study of these books in the spirit 
in which they were conceived, and with the purpose 
for which they were written, as that purpose has 
been defined by one whose writings are recognized as 
among the loftiest in the whole collection : " Every 
scripture inspired of God is also profitable for 
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruc- 
tion in righteousness, that the man of God may be 
complete, furnished completely unto every good 
work." 2 

^ Though some of the books to be found in the apocryphal 
Old Testament are morally equal to some of those included in the 
canon. 

2 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. 



CHAPTEK II 

HEBKEW HISTORY 

The history of the Hebrew nation, as it is re- 
corded in the Bible, begins with the exodus from 
Egypt of the before -enslaved tribes ; this exodus 
took place, according to the opinions of modern 
scholars, about B. c. 1250.^ But the earlier history 
contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and 
Numbers may properly be regarded as constitu- 
tional history, and is so interwoven with the con- 
stitution and laws of the Hebrews that it will be 
more appropriately considered in the chapters de- 
voted to a consideration of the origin and growth 
of those laws.2 The distinctively historical books 
are those of Joshua, Judges, First and Second 
Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and Second 
Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. If we assume 
that the exodus took place about 1250 B. c, and the 
restoration of Israel to her land and the rebuilding 
of the city and temple, as described by Ezra and 
Nehemiah, about the year 450 b. c, the history of 
the ancient Hebrews, as narrated in the Old Testa- 
ment, covers a period of about eight hundred years. 

1 See chronological table on page 3d. 

2 See chapters iv. and v. 



28 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

How were tlie facts which are narrated in these 
histories ascertained by the narrator ? 

A journalist lives and a biographer may live in 
the times when the events which he records took 
place, and then he may tell what he has himself 
seen ; but a historian rarely is the narrator of 
events of which he was an eye-witness ; he generally 
gathers his information from various sources, and 
in his history gives an account of the facts as he 
has ascertained them by historical research. There 
is no reason to suppose that the Hebrew historian 
pursued any other course.^ We should expect that, 
writing of events occupying a period of something 
like a thousand years, he would have given us in 
his history the substance of accounts, documentary 
or oral, in which the history of those years had 
been preserved ; in other words, we should expect 
that other materials than his own personal know- 
ledge would enter into his history. This expecta- 
tion is confirmed by a study of Oriental literature. 
Oriental histories, so the scholars tell us, are rarely 
original ; they are compilations. The Oriental 
historian does not, as the modern historian, ex- 
amine and investigate original sources, and give in 
his own language the results of his investigations ; 
he takes what I may call the raw materials of his- 
tory which he has discovered, and weaves them 
together, connecting them by utterances of his own. 
When a new edition is to be prepared, the new 

^ Luke expressly declares that lie gathered the materials for 
his Gospel to some extent in this way (Luke i. 1-4). 



HEBREW HISTORY 29 

writer simply takes this conglomerate and inter- 
calates the new material which he has obtained, or 
appends it in additional pages.^ 

If, then, we suppose that Hebrew history was 
prepared as other Oriental histories have been pre- 
pared, we shall assume it possible by painstaking 
study to ascertain to some extent what are the 
materials of which it was composed. This is what 
modern students of Hebrew history have done; 
they have separated it into its constituent parts. 
They are not all of one mind in the details, but 
they are all of one mind in the belief that the 
Hebrew history is not only composed from pre- 
existing materials, as Macaulay's history or Green's 
history, but that it is so composed of preexist- 
ing materials that, through linguistic peculiarities, 
forms of expression, historical references, and other 
indications, the various elements of the history can 
be measurably distinguished. Even the English 
reader of the Bible cannot fail to distinguish two 
of these constituent elements in the later history 
of the Hebrews, because these elements are not com- 
bined in one narrative. From the time of David, 

1 " It is the law of Oriental history -writing-, in fact, that one 
book should annihilate its predecessor. The sources of a com- 
pilation rarely survive the compilation itself. A book in the East 
is rarely recopied just as it stands. It is brought up to date by 
the addition to it of what is known, or supposed to be known, 
from other sources. The individuality of the historical book does 
not exist in the East ; it is the substance, not the form, which is 
held of importance, and no scruple is felt about mixing' up authors 
and styles. The end sought is to be complete, and that is all." 
The History of Israel, by Ernest Kenan, vol. iii. pp. 50, 51. 



30 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

that is, about 1000 b. c, to the time of the cap- 
tivity, that is, about 600 b. c, the history is con- 
tained in two narratives, parallel in time but very 
different in spirit — the First and Second Books 
of Kings and the First and Second Books of 
Chronicles. 

Thinkers may be roughly divided into two great 
types, one of which lays emphasis on truth, the 
other on organization. The first, fixing its atten- 
tion on truth, forgets that to be efficient in society 
truth must be embodied; the second, fixing its 
attention on the mediating organization, forgets 
the truth which alone can vitalize it. Men of the 
first type, having no objective standard, often make 
a standard of their own personal opinions; indif- 
ferent to the cooperation of their fellow-men and 
strenuous in their own opinions, they refuse to 
compromise the latter to gain the former ; and thus 
become irreconcilables and impracticables. Men 
of the second type, overestimating the force of 
numbers and of authority, and underestimating the 
force inherent in moral principles, too readily yield 
principles to gain recruits. They may, indeed, be 
quite ready to sacrifice self to truth, but they are 
too ready to sacrifice truth to organization. Lack- 
ing a standard in themselves, they seek it in the 
body to which they have attached themselves. In 
philosophy the first type of man is always a moral 
reformer, generally an independent, often a doc- 
trinaire. His loyalty to his own convictions is 
strong ; his loyalty to party is slight. The second 



HEBREW HISTORY 31 

seeks to carry moral reform only so far as he can 
carry it through a political organization; he is 
generally an opportunist ; he sometimes degener- 
ates into what is called a "machine politician." 
In religion the first has faith, but no creed; he 
worships, but without a ritual ; he is religious, but 
unchurchly. When organization meant the Church 
of Eome, he was a Protestant ; when it meant the 
Established Church, a Puritan; when it meant 
Presbyterianism, an Independent; and when it 
meant Congregationalism, a " Come-outer." The 
second is always a Churchman, though he may 
be a Koman Churchman, an Anglican Churchman, 
a Presbyterian Churchman, or a Congregational 
Churchman. He is a defender of creeds, of the 
established order, of the ancient traditions — or, if 
he is inclined to reform, he will not carry reform 
so far as to break with the traditions of the past or 
the recognized authorities of his own ecclesiastical 
organization. In the history of the world the first 
is interested in the progress of ideas, the second in 
the development of institutions. Is he a historian ? 
the first writes the story of popular life, the second 
that -of institutional life. John Eichard Green, 
writing the history of the English people, repre- 
sents the first; Lord Macaulay, measuring all 
events by their relation to Whig principles and 
policies, or Lord Clarendon, measuring them by 
their relation to the Eoyalist principles and policies, 
represents the second. 

This distinction is apparent upon even a most 



32 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

cursory comparison of tlie Books of Kings and of 
Chronicles. The Book of Chronicles — really one 
book in two parts — is written by an ecclesiastic 
who identifies the religion of the Hebrew people 
with its churchly forms. His history is essentially 
Levitical in contents and in spirit — the history of 
Jerusalem, of the Temple, and of the Temple ordi- 
nances. National events are measured by their 
relation to the institutions of religion. When the 
separation of the before-united kingdom takes 
place, and the ten tribes form a nation by them- 
selves in northern Palestine, leaving Jerusalem in 
the hands of the southern tribes, the author of 
Chronicles does not include them in his subsequent 
history, for they have no Temple, no Levitical 
priesthood, no orthodox ritual; to him, therefore, 
they are to all intents and purposes as pagans. 
Even the intensely religious and dramatically ro- 
mantic lives of Elijah and Elisha do not concern 
him ; they are in the northern kingdom, and they 
are unrelated to the ecclesiastical institutions of 
Hebraism. On the other hand, he gives in great 
detail the organization of the hierarchy, the furnish- 
ing of the Temple, the genealogies of the tribes, 
lists of the cities of the Levites, and makes much 
of the glory of Solomon, the builder of the Temple, 
and nothing of his decadence and fall. The Book 
of Kings — for this also is one book in two parts — 
is as distinctly prophetic as the parallel history is 
priestly in its character. " The writer records the 
fulfillment of the promises which God had made to 



HEBREW BISTORT 33 

David and his line. A son was to succeed David 
whose kingdom should be established of the Lord, 
who should build a house for the Name of Jehovah, 
and to whom God would be a Father and from 
whom the name of the Lord should not depart.^ 
To show that this prophecy was fulfilled is the 
object of the Book of Kings, and what does not 
conduce thereto is passed over by the compiler 
with little notice." ^ It is he alone who tells the 
story of Elijah and Elisha, he alone who records 
the influence of Isaiah in the reforms of Heze- 
kiah, he alone who, in telling the story of Josiah's 
reform, indicates the extent to which the pollutions 
of the Temple and the priesthood had been carried 
in the previous reign of Manasseh. Each deals 
with the nation as the people of God ; but to the one 
the divine life is centred in the ecclesiastical organi- 
zation, to the other that life is manifested in the 
activity of the prophets, who belong to no order 
and are representatives of no organization. So 
marked is the difference between the two narratives 
that some scholars have attributed the Book of 
Chronicles to Ezra, the Book of Kings to Jere- 
miah ; it is certain that the one is continued with- 
out a break, except a purely formal one, in the 
history of Ezra ; it is equally certain that the other 
is pervaded by the spirit, not of the Levitical code, 

1 2 Sam. chap. vii. 

2 Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges^ Book of Kings. 
Introduction, p. xxiv. 



34 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

but of the prophetic law contained in the Book of 
Deuteronomy.^ 

The modem scholar, seeing these two types of 
history, the priestly and the prophetic, in the later 
historical books of the Bible, has looked for and 
found them in the earlier books, though woven to- 
gether into a single strand. The priestly narrative 
and the prophetic narrative, apparent to the casual 
English reader, in the form of our English Bible, 
from the reign of David to the Captivity, appear 
scarcely less evident to the modern literary student 
of the Bible in the historical narrative from the 
creation of the world to the time of David. In his 
analysis of the composite narrative the modern 
student may be sometimes mistaken ; but that 
there were originally two such narratives, and that 
the two have been united in the one narrative which 
we now possess, is regarded by all scholars who 
apply literary and scientific methods to the study 
of the Bible as beyond all question. 

In the first century after Christ, Tatian con- 
structed a harmony of the Gospels which is known 

^ "Jewish tradition assigiis the authorship of Kings to Jere- 
miah. Modem criticism neither unreseryedly accepts nor wholly 
rejects this ascription." Canon F. C. Cook, Bible Commentary. 
" The recTirreDce of the final passage of our present copies of 
Chronicles at the commencement of Ezra, taken in conjunction 
with the undoubted fact that there is a very close resemblance of 
style and tone between the two books, suggests naturally the 
explanation, which has been accepted by some of the best critics, 
that the two works, Chronicles and Ezra, were originally one and 
were afterward separated." Ibid. 



HEBREW HIS TOBY 35 

as the Diatessaron. It has been recently discov- 
ered in the Vatican, translated, and published. If 
the Four Gospels had disappeared, we should have 
in this Diatessaron one Gospel composed of the 
four narratives previously existing. Modern schol- 
ars are unanimously of the opinion that the Old 
Testament historical narratives, prior to the Book 
of Kings, are, in a somewhat similar manner, com- 
posed of two or more previously existing narratives, 
and that it is possible, to some extent, to separate 
the history into its different elements. One of 
these narratives is known as the priestly, or some- 
times the Elohist narrative, because in it the He- 
brew word Elohim is used to designate God ; the 
other is termed the prophetic, or sometimes the 
Jahvist narrative, because in it the Hebrew word 
Jahveh or Jehovah is generally used to designate 
God. When the two words Jahveh-Elohim, or, as 
rendered in our English Bible, the Lord God, are 
used, the two narratives have been combined in 
one by an unknown editor. The opinion that the 
historical books are thus composed of preexisting 
documents is what is known as the Documentary 
Hypothesis. But the scientific or literary student 
of the Bible regards this opinion as no longer hypo- 
thetical. 

He also thinks that these original elements them- 
selves are not original writings, but are composed 
of preexisting materials, and these materials also, 
by painstaking study, he endeavors to discover and 
make clear. It would involve too great detail 



36 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

and carry me too far from my main purpose to re- 
port here the conclusions to which this analysis has 
led modern students,^ but the principle is clearly 
illustrated by original elements easily discernible 
in the Bible by the English reader. Whole books 
are embodied in this history ; as, the Book of 
the Covenant in the Book of Exodus, or the larger 
Book of the Covenant in the Book of Deuteron- 
omy .^ Ancient songs are embodied in it, like the 
song of Deborah and Barak in the Book of Judges, 
or the elegy of David over Saul and Jonathan in 
the Book of Samuel.^ Other books now lost are 
referred to by name and quoted verbatim by the 
Hebrew historians. There are twelve such books 
mentioned in the Old Testament as authority for 
statements made. They are : The Wars of the 
Lord, the Book of Jasher, the Book of Samuel 
concerning the Kingdom, the Book of Solomon, 
the Chronicles of David, the Acts of Solomon, the 
Acts of Nathan, Samuel, and Gad, the Book of 
Ahijah the Shilonite, the Visions of Iddo, the Book 
of Shemaiah the Prophet, the Book of Jehu, the 
Sayings of the Seers.* In some cases these books 

^ The object of the Polychrome Bible is to make clear to the 
reader by colors the different material of which scholars believe 
the narratives are composed. The principle applies also to other 
than the historical books. 

2 Exod. xx.-xxiv. 7 ; Deut. xii.-xxvi. 

3 Jiidg. V. ; 2 Sam, i. 17-27. 

* Num. xxi. 14 ; Josh. x. 13 ; 2 Sam. i. 18 ; 1 Sam. x. 25 ; 
1 Kings iv. 32, 33 ; 1 Chron. xxvii. 24 ; 1 Kings xi. 41 ; 1 Chron. 
xxix. 29 ; 2 Chron. ix. 29 ; xii. 15 ; xx. 34 ; xxxiii. 19. 



HEBREW HISTORY 37 

are simply referred to ; in some there are definite 
and explicit quotations from them. One quotation 
may, perhaps, serve as well as many to illustrate 
the kind of use which these Hebrew historians 
made of preexisting material, acknowledging their 
indebtedness therefor : — 

" And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until 
the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. 
Is not this written in the Book of Jasher ? So the sun 
stood stiU in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go 
down about a whole day." 

This famous passage in Joshua, which has been a 
puzzle to so many men, is explicitly said to be 
quoted from a more ancient record — the Book of 
Jasher — which is now believed to have been an 
ancient war-song.^ In addition to these are offi- 
cial records incorporated in the Old Testament 
histories. In the Book of Ezra, for example, we 
have a copy of what purports to be a letter sent to 
Darius by certain opponents of the Hebrews, seek- 
ing to secure an edict from the king to prevent the 
rebuilding of Jerusalem ; a copy of a second letter 
sent by the Hebrews in reply, seeking for permis- 
sion to continue the rebuilding of Jerusalem ; and 
a copy, or what purports to be a copy, of the offi- 
cial edict which came back from Darius the king 

1 Josh. X. 13 ; compare 2 Sam. i. 18. " From these passages 
(and no other are extant which can be proved to be extracted 
from it), the general character of the book and its contents seem 
apparent. Both passages are imquestionably rhythmical in struc- 
ture and poetical in diction." Bible Commentary^ on Josh. x. 13. 



38 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

in response.^ It is possible, of course, that these 
are not copies ; that they are written by the his- 
torian in his own language, and for the purpose of 
imparting a dramatic vigor to the narrative ; but the 
indications are that he had access to certain official 
records which had come down to his time and of 
which he made use in telling his story. 

Finally we have early traditions and popular 
folk-lore — songs the mothers sing to their children, 
stories the mothers tell their children — inserted in 
the narrative for the purpose of illustrating phases 
of life with which the historian was concerned, and 
which he was endeavoring to interpret to his read- 
ers. Such are the story of Balaam's ass, the Sam- 
son stories, and perhaps some of the Elisha stories.^ 

Thus a careful examination even of our English 
Bible makes it clear that it is composed of pre- 
existing material, some portions of which it is pos- 
sible for us to distinguish, showing whence it came 
and what is its character. The difficulty of doing 
this is enhanced and the appearance of unity in the 
narrative is increased by the fact that the ancients 
had none of those mechanical contrivances of which 
we make such free use to indicate selections and 
quotations. Quotation marks, parentheses, foot- 
notes, and appendices are all comparatively mod- 
ern. When an editor of previous writings desired 

1 Ezra iv., v., vi. 

2 See The Bible and its Supremacy, by Dean Farrar, chap, 
xvii. ; Scriptures Hebrew and Christian, by E. T. Bartlett, D. D., 
and John P. Peters, D. D., vol. ii. part 3, 



HEBREW HISTORY 39 

to add something from some other writer, or an 
interpolation of his own, he had no other method 
of doing this than by incorporating the addition 
directly and immediately in the narrative, of which 
it henceforth became an indistinguishable portion. 
How, then, the question will be asked, can we 
know what is true and what is false in this Hebrew 
history? If the historian gathered all sorts of 
material, — official records, popular songs, current 
stories, ancient documents, prehistoric legends, — 
and out of all this material composed his history, 
how can we tell what of it is trustworthy ? And 
if we cannot tell what of it is trustworthy, if there 
is no unfailing standard of judgment, does not the 
motto, " False in one, false in all," apply? This 
question will perhaps press upon the honest and 
candid inquirer with greater force if he recalls the 
undoubted fact that the age in which the Bible 
was composed was not a critical age. John Adding- 
ton Symonds, in his history, "The Renaissance 
in Italy," has discriminated very justly between 
three stages in the history of scholarship : the age 
of passionate desire ; the age of indiscriminate ac- 
quisition ; and the age of critical scholarship.^ If, 
as the modern scholars believe, the historical books 
of the Old Testament were finally edited in their 
present form about the time of the Restoration, 
say 450 b. c, the editing took place in an era of 
indiscriminate acquisition, and this fact, while it 
lends additional sanction to the theory that the 
1 The Age of the Despots^ by J. A. Symonds, pp. 20-22. 



40 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

history of the Hebrew people, as we possess it, is 
a composition of earlier materials, not critically 
weighed and measured, does by just so much de- 
tract from its scientific accuracy as a historical 
record. 

It might suffice in reply to quote the conclusion 
concerning the historical value of these ancient 
records recorded by one of the most radical of the 
modern critics, Professor C. H. Cornill. In " The 
Rise of the People of Israel," he says : — 

" I hold the firm and well-grounded conviction that the 
traditions of the people of Israel itself regarding its ear- 
liest history are thoroughly historical in all essential 
points, and can sustain the keenest and most searching 
criticism. Poetic legends have, indeed, woven about 
those ancient traditions a misty, magic veil which charms 
the eye and captivates the heart, and in which hes the 
spell that those traditions cast over every unbiased mind. 
Not with rude vandal hand should we tear away this 
veil, but with loving care resolve it into its single threads 
and remove it with considerate hand, so that the origi- 
nal image may stand forth in its unadorned simplicity 
and naked chastity, and then we shall see that it is really 
a noble human figure, and not a mere creature of the 
imagination that was concealed beneath the protecting 
cover of this veil." 

Have we not a stronger basis for our faith in all 
that is important in Hebrew history, after that 
history has been searched by one inspired by the 
scientific spirit who has no preconceptions in regard 
to its truth, and who is perfectly ready to subject 



HEBREW HISTORY 41 

it to the same kind of searcliing criticism to which 
he will subject any other literature, and who, as 
the result of that searching criticism, reaches the 
" firm and well grounded conviction that the tradi- 
tions of the people of Israel . . . are thoroughly- 
historical in all essential points," than we could 
have had if there had been no such critical investi- 
gation into its historical truthfulness ? 

Nevertheless, I think it must be conceded by the 
candid student that we have no such assurance as 
our fathers thought they possessed as to the accu- 
racy of the statements oifact of the Bible history; 
but it does not follow that our faith in its truth is 
any less clearly established. There is an evident 
and an important difference between statements of 
fact and statements of truth, and ignoring that 
difference has involved Bible students in needless 
perplexity. A statement which agrees with an 
outward and objective existence is a fact, or, more 
accurately, the statement of a fact; a statement 
which agrees with a subjective and invisible prin- 
ciple is a truth. Strictly speaking, truth includes 
fact, that is, all correct statements of fact are 
truth; but all truths are not facts. It is a fact 
that Caesar crossed the Rubicon ; it is a truth that 
God is love. 

Now, it is a matter of absolute unimportance to 
us whether in all particulars the Hebrew history 
accords with the facts; but it is of the utmost 
importance for us to know whether or not its 
statements accord with the truth. A single illus- 



42 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

tration taken from the New Testament will make 
this distinction clear. Whether Jesus Christ was 
born in Bethlehem or in Nazareth is not a question 
which materially affects the moral character of 
mankind. A man may be as good and as devout 
a man, and as sincere a follower of Jesus Christ, 
if he believes that Jesus Christ was born in Naza- 
reth as if he believes that he was born in Bethle- 
hem. But the question whether the life of Christ 
corresponds to the divine ideal, whether it is such 
a life that men ought to follow it, whether his 
character is such as corresponds to that of the 
Divine, the Eternal, the Invisible One — that is a 
profound question, the answer to which must deter- 
mine the quality of the answerer's devotion and the 
course of his life. That is a question of truth ; the 
other is a question of fact. It is a matter of no 
more concern to us to know of how many thou- 
sand men David's army was composed on some 
great occasion than it is for us to know how many 
men some Greek general had in his campaign ; but 
whether the fundamental principles of national life 
are rightly interpreted by the Hebrew historian — 
that concerns our very life, national and individual. 
History may be divided into three classes : the 
factual, the philosophical, and the epic. By factual 
history I mean history which undertakes simply to 
tell the facts. The writer of such history cares for 
nothing else. He does not inquire what the facts 
signify ; what is their human interest ; what is 
their moral meaning : he simply seeks to know 



HEBREW HISTORY 43 

what is the fact, and he will sometimes spend 
weeks and even months in the investigation of a 
date, in order to secure accuracy in his facts. The 
official report of a department may be taken as an 
illustration of factual history. The head of the 
department is not supposed to have, though he 
sometimes does, any ends to serve, any lessons to 
teach, any interest to awaken ; it is his business 
simply to give the statistical results of his investi- 
gation. There is not much that is philosophic or 
epic about the records of a census. The philosophic 
historian is one who is interested in facts only 
or chiefly because they illustrate or enforce some 
theory. The facts are not ends ; they are simply 
instruments in his hands : he summons his facts as 
a lawyer calls his witness, that they may testify 
on his behaK. Few scholars would go to Buckle's 
" History of Civilization " to get an accurate state- 
ment of the facts of the periods with which he dealt. 
Buckle wished to demonstrate a certain theory of 
civilization, and with great ingenuity he brought 
together facts which would help to demonstrate his 
theory. He wrote a philosophical history. Some- 
where between these two is what I will call epic his- 
tory. The epic historian is not interested in mere 
fact, nor has he a philosophy or theory which he 
wishes to demonstrate. He is interested in certain 
phases of human life, and he uses the facts of his- 
tory, as the dramatist uses the creations of his imag- 
ination, to interpret human life. Froude's " Life 
of Erasmus " is a good illustration of epic history. 



44 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

The history of the ancient times was epic history. 
The ancient peoples did not discriminate carefully 
between fact and fiction, between observation and 
imagination, between what they had seen and what 
they pictured to themselves. Their poetry, there- 
fore, is historical poetry, having its roots in history ; 
and their history is poetical history, portrayed for 
the purpose of interesting their readers in certain 
phases of human life. Homer's Iliad we now know 
is based on certain facts of life far back in Greek 
history; the historicity of the siege of Troy has 
been pretty well established by Schliemann's in- 
vestigations ; but to what extent Homer's repre- 
sentation of the facts of that siege is historically 
accurate in detail it is impossible to determine. 
On the other hand, Herodotus does not hesitate to 
use tradition, story, fiction, myth, anything that 
will aid him to make interesting the story which he 
writes. And yet Herodotus is called the "father 
of history." He writes for a purpose. His pur- 
pose is not to tell exactly what has happened — his 
history is not factual; nor is his purpose to estab- 
lish a philosophy which he desires to demonstrate 
— his history is not philosophic ; his purpose is to 
illustrate certain phases of Greek life and char- 
acter in which he is profoundly interested. He has 
stated this purpose very explicitly in the very first 
sentence of his history. " This," he says, " is a 
publication of the researches of Herodotus of Hali- 
carnassus, in order that the actions of men may 
not be effaced by time, nor the great and wondrous 



HEBREW HISTORY 45 

deeds displayed both by Greeks and barbarians de- 
prived of renown : and amongst tbe rest, for what 
cause they waged war upon each other." This is 
the purpose of Herodotus's history — to make clear 
to all future time the renown of the Greek people. 

To this class Hebrew history belongs. It is not 
factual history ; it is not written by men who spent 
time and labor in securing accuracy in historical 
detail. They rarely give a date; the dates of 
Biblical history, so far as we possess them at all, 
have been ascertained by subsequent and more 
scientific historians. In some cases, as in the 
early history of David, two apparently incongruous 
accounts current in their time are incorporated in 
the narrative without any attempt to explain the 
incongruity or to harmonize the narratives. That 
has been left for subsequent scholars to attempt. 
It is clear from such facts as these that these his- 
tories are not compiled by men whose interest was 
in minute historical scholarship. Nor were they 
compiled by philosophical historians whose object 
it was to prove or to illustrate a theory. They do 
not resemble Buckle's " History of Civilization." 
The Hebrew was rarely a philosopher; he had 
few theories, and those were of the simplest de- 
scription. 

The Bible histories are epic histories. The his- 
torians were interested in one phase of human life 
— a phase which may be expressed by the single 
sentence, God is in his world. They believed in a 
living God, a God who dwelt with his people, who 



46 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

guided and inspired them, who rewarded them 
when they did right and punished them when they 
did wrong, who was stronger than the strongest, 
and was about them as the mountains about Jeru- 
salem. They believed in the faith of the prophets 
that Jehovah was able to pluck up and pull down 
and destroy the nation, or to build it and to plant 
it at his will.^ They saw in the history of their 
own people the witness of this presence and power 
of the Living God. They wrote history, not as 
Buckle, to prove a theory ; not as Herodotus, to 
preserve the memory of the great and wondrous 
deeds of an ancient people ; not as Macaulay, to 
trace the rise and progress of certain political 
principles as embodied in a great political party ; 
not as John Richard Green, to show the develop- 
ment of a great nation from small beginnings to 
a position of imperial influence and power ; they 
wrote the history of the Hebrew people to exhibit 
the dealings of the Living God with his people 
and with the peoples who were related to them. It 
is this which gives to Biblical history its peculiar 
character. That history is less dramatic than 
Froude, less philosophic than Buckle, less scien- 
tific than Freeman, less democratic than Green, 
less romantic than Herodotus ; but it is of all his- 
tories the most religious, because, above all other 
histories, ancient or modern, it endeavors to inter- 
pret the part the Living God took in the history 
of a peculiar people. 

1 Jer. viii. 7, 9. 



HEBREW HISTORY 47 

It is for this reason that the Hebrew historian 
makes no attempt to exalt the virtues or conceal 
the vices of either the people or its leaders. With 
a frankness which has often been misinterpreted, 
he narrates the domestic infelicities of Abraham, 
the treachery of Jacob, the shortsighted statesman- 
ship of Joseph, unconsciously preparing by a com- 
mercial monopoly for the future enslavement of 
his race, the passion and the penitence of Moses, 
the self-will of the athletic but inefficient Samson, 
the superstition of Jephtha, the insane jealousy of 
Saul, the adultery of David, the corrupt commer- 
cialism of Solomon. He is equally frank in dealing 
with the nation : in describing its idolatries at 
the foot of Sinai, its childish waywardness in the 
wilderness, its alternate cowardice and cruelty of 
conscience in the Canaanite campaigns, its abject 
submission to a bondage which it needed only cour- 
age to repel, its repeated degeneracies and aposta- 
sies, and its final captivity and disgrace. From 
the opening chapter of this composite history to 
the end, the subject is not Israel, nor Israel's great 
men, but Israel's God in his dealings with Israel. 
It is Jehovah who calls reluctant Moses to assume 
the task of emancipating Israel ; Jehovah who 
inspires the nation with courage at the Red Sea ; 
Jehovah who provides it with both food and guid- 
ance in the wilderness ; Jehovah who gives to it 
the bases of its civil laws and civil liberty ; Jeho- 
vah who frees it from the superstitions in which it 
has been reared, and into which it afterwards falls 



48 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

with irritating repetitions; Jehovah who appears 
to Joshua and equips him with courage for his 
great campaigns; Jehovah who is the sole bond 
of union to this unorganized people during the 
colonial period ; Jehovah who sustains Saul when 
Saul is loyal, and abandons him to defeat and 
death when he is disloyal ; Jehovah who summons 
David from the sheepfold to the throne ; Jehovah 
who sends prophets, from Elijah the reformer to 
Isaiah the statesman, to recover the people from 
their apostasies, and to counsel and encourage them 
in their national crises ; Jehovah who gives them 
prosperity when they walk in his way, and who 
sends them adversity when they depart from it. 

The historian does, indeed, narrate the deeds of 
great men ; but he so narrates them that our atten- 
tion is fixed, not on the man nor on the deed, but 
on Jehovah who inspires the man to do the deed. 
Moses was a great statesman, the father of civil 
liberty for all humanity ; yet it is not of the 
statesman but of the prophet who walked with 
Jehovah that we think as we read the story of his 
life. David was a great organizer; the essential 
principles of his organization of the state into great 
departments and of the army into companies, regi- 
ments, and army corps we still maintain to-day, 
nearly thirty centuries after his death ; ^ but it is 
not of the great organizer, but of the poet and of 
his experience of God in nature and men, that we 
think as we read the story of his life and his 

1 2 Sam. xviii. 1, 2 ; 1 Chron. xxvii. 25-34. 



HEBREW HISTORY 49 

achievements. Ahab brought Israel to a great 
degree of prosperity by bis skill and courage as an 
astute statesman and a brave captain ; ^ and yet it 
is of the sins of Ahab against God and humanity 
that we think as we read the story of his reign ; 
not of his statecraft and his military achievements, 
but of his robbery of Naboth. In all this Biblical 
history the moral element predominates over the 
merely political, and the religious over the merely 
ethical. And yet the historian rarely if ever 
formulates a dogma or draws a moral. He writes 
not to prove that " righteousness exalte th a na- 
tion, and sin is a reproach to any people ; " but 
believing that this is true, and believing that this 
truth is writ large in the history of his people, he 
so writes the history that his readers see it recorded 
there, not by his pen, but by the events themselves. 
The question, then, for the student of Biblical 
history to ask, is not whether all the deeds of the 
heroes of Hebrew history were virtuous, whether 
Abraham did right to lie, or Jephtha to sacri- 
fice his daughter, whether Samson was really a 
hero, or David's adultery a pardonable offense. 
The historian recites the virtues of men without 
applause, and their vices without condemnation. 
He draws no morals ; this he leaves to be done 
by the conscience of the reader. The question is 

1 1 Kings XX. See History of Israel, by C. A. Cornill, 102 ff. ; 
The Religion of Israel, by Karl Budde, 116 ff. ; Hastings's Bihle 
Dictionary, tit. Ahab ; History of the Jewish Church, by A. P. 
Stanley, lect. xxx. 



50 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

not whether God commanded all that the ancient 
Hebrews thought he commanded, or approved all 
that they thought he approved. The historian 
recites their errors as well as their sins. It is not 
whether all the occurrences took place as they are 
recorded; whether Samson tied foxes or jackals 
together ; ^ whether Elijah was fed by ravens or 
Arabians ; ^ whether Elisha made the axe-head swim 
in the water.^ The value of the history does not 
depend upon its scientific accuracy in detailed in- 
cidents in this remote past. The question to con- 
sider is whether the historian is right or wrong in 
his interpretation of human history, whether God 
is in his world of men, whether Jehovah is to be 
reckoned with in national policies, whether moral 
forces are to be taken account of by wise men in 
the world's adminstration ; or whether might 
makes right and God is only on the side of the 
strong battalions. This question I do not discuss ; 
for it is no part of the object of this volume to 
show that the view of life taken by the Biblical 
writers is correct. I only seek to show what that 
view is ; to interpret the Old Testament, not to 
discuss its accuracy. To interpret it we must 
understand first of all the purpose of the writers ; 
and the purpose of the historical writers of the 
Old Testament was not to secure infallible accuracy 

^ Judg. XV. 4. 

2 1 King's xvii. 4, 6. See Robert Tuck's Handbook of Biblical 
Difficulties, p. 439 ; Kitto's Bible Blus., vol. ii. part 2, pp. 216- 
220. 

3 2 Kings vi. 1-7. 



HEBREW HISTORY 51 

in dates, numbers, statistics, and historical inci- 
dents, but to interpret tbeir national history as 
Jehovah's dealing with his people. Did they in- 
terpret it aright ? and does this interpretation give 
us a clue by which we can interpret also the history 
of our own times ? If so, the Bible history is true, 
and its truth is not impugned, and not even a sus- 
picion is cast upon its truth, by the conclusion that 
certain of the incidents recorded in it are unhis- 
torical, and many of the moral judgments which it 
records are to be corrected in the light of a later 
moral development, and by the standards of a later 
revelation. 



CHAPTER in 

PEEHISTOKIC TEADinONS KEWEITTEN 

The principles respecting Hebrew history which 
were set forth and illustrated in the preceding 
chapter are two. The first principle is that this 
history is a compilation from previously existing 
materials, and that by careful study it is possible 
to distinguish in some measure these different ma- 
terials, to separate the strand and show the threads 
of which it is composed, and that this task is made 
easier for us because in the latter portion of the 
history two of these strands are separated for us 
into two books — the Book of Chronicles, which is 
priestly or ecclesiastical, and the Book of Kings, 
which is prophetic. The second principle is that 
this history is not factual nor philosophical, but 
epic ; that it is not compiled by a scientific stu- 
dent whose aim it is to give accurate information 
as to details, nor by a philosophical thinker whose 
aim it is to enforce a theory of human life, but by 
a prophetic or poetic or dramatic writer, who uses 
the material which he finds ready to his hand for 
the purpose of illustrating a certain phase or aspect 
of human life, namely, that aspect which presents 
itself to one who believes that God is in his world 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 53 

of men, and who in his observation of the course of 
human events looks for the indications of a divine 
presence guiding and directing them. The histor- 
ical book of the Bible which affords, if not the 
most striking illustration of these two principles^ 
at least the illustration most apparent to the Eng- 
lish reader, is the Book of Genesis ; and this for 
three reasons : first, because the narratives which 
that book contains appear on their face to be epic 
or dramatic rather than factual; second, because 
we are able easily to separate the narratives of 
which the book is composed, and to show that 
there are two or more not always consistent ac- 
counts of the same events ; and, third, because the 
researches of archaeologists have discovered in 
other and admittedly older literature the materials 
of which the narratives might easily have been 
composed.^ 

^ The student who wishes to pursue more fully the study of 
the question whether the historical books were written by one 
author, or were compiled from a variety of documentary and tra- 
ditional sources by an editor or editors, will find material for the 
purpose in the following volumes : An Introduction to the Litera- 
ture of the Old Testament, by S. R. Driver, D. D. ; the best book 
in the English language, so far as I know, to give the student the 
results of modern scholarship in its analysis of the Old Testament. 
The Genesis of Genesis and The Triple Tradition of Exodus, by 
Professor B. W. Bacon, D. D., of the Yale Theological Seminary, 
which give analyses of these two books into their supposed con- 
stituent parts. The Beginnings of History according to the Bible 
and the Traditions of Oriental Peoples, by Francis Lenormant, Pro- 
fessor of Archaeology at the National Library of France ; to this 
and the following volume I am indebted for the parallel traced in 
this chapter between the Genesis tradition and one of the Assyrian 



54 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

An early tradition, still regarded as trustworthy 
by the traditional school of Biblical critics, attrib- 
utes the Book of Genesis to Moses.^ If we were 

tablets. The Chaldcean Account of Genesis, by George Smith of 
the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum. 
Uncyclopcedia Britannica, article Pentateuch, by J. Wellhausen, 
Professor of Oriental Languages, University of Halle. For the 
view of those who maintain the single and Mosaic authorship of 
the Pentateuch the reader is referred to The Unity of the Book of 
Genesis and the Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, by WUliam 
Henry Green, D. D., LL. D., Professor of Oriental and Old Testa- 
ment Literature in Princeton Theological Seminary, who, at the 
time of his death, was the ablest representative in this country of 
the traditional school. See, also, The Veracity of the JSexateuch, by 
Samuel C. Bartlett, D. D., LL. D., late President of Dartmouth 
College ; The New Testament under Fire, by A. J. F. Behrends, 
D. D. ; and Anti-Higher Criticism, edited by L. W. Munhall, M. A. 
The two latter are general in their character, and are not con- 
fined, as are the others, to the problems of the Pentateuch. 

1 " Is the Pentateuch the work of Moses ? It is univer- 
sally conceded that this was the traditional opinion among the 
Jews. To this the New Testament bears the most abundant and 
explicit testimony." In support of this Dr. Green refers to the 
following New Testament passages : ' ' The Pentateuch is by our 
Lord called * the book of Moses ' (Mark xii. 26) ; when it is read 
and preached the Apostles say that Moses is read (2 Cor. iii. 15) 
and preached (Acts xv. 21). The Pentateuch and the books of 
the prophets, which were read in the worship of the synagogue, 
are called, both by our Lord (Luke xvi. 29, 31) and the Evange- 
lists (Luke xxiv. 27), 'Moses and the prophets' or ' the law of 
Moses and the prophets ' (Luke xxiv. 44 ; Acts xxviii. 23). Of 
the injunctions of the Pentateuch not only do the Jews say, when 
addressing our Lord, ' Moses commanded' (John viii. 5), but our 
Lord repeatedly uses the same form of speech (Matt. viii. 4 ; xix. 
7, 8 ; Mark i. 44 ; x. 3 ; Luke v. 14), as testified by three of the 
Evangelists. Of the law in general he says, ' Moses gave the 
law ' (John vii. 19), and the Evangelist echoes, ' the law was given 
by Moses ' (John i. 17). And that Moses was not only the author 
of the law, but committed its precepts to writing, is af&rmed by 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 55 

to suppose that this tradition is correct, and that 
the traditional Biblical chronology were substan- 
tially accurate, then the Book of Genesis was 
written about 1450 B. c. But, still supposing the 
traditional chronology to be correct, this book deals 
with a period of from two to twenty-five centuries 

the Jews (Mark xii. 19), and also by our Lord (Mark x. 5), who 
further speaks of him as writing predictions respecting himself 
(John V. 46, 47), and also traces a narrative in the Pentateuchal 
history to him (Mark sdi. 26)." The Higher Criticism of the Penta- 
teuch, by William Henry Green, D. D., LL. D., pp. 32, 33. On the 
other hand, so orthodox a critic as Dr. Franz Delitsch declares 
that these references by Christ to the books of Moses are not con- 
clusive on the question of authorship. He says {A New Commen- 
tary on Genesis, vol. i. p. 21), " In the N. T. also the Pentateuch 
is called 'the book of Moses ' (Mark xii. 26), or just ' Moses ' (Acts 
XV. 21 ; 2 Cor. iii. 15) ; and when injunctions or sayings are quoted 
from it (e. g. from Exodus, Luke xx. 37 ; Leviticus, Mark i. 44, 
Rom. X. 5 ; Deuteronomy, Mark xii. 19, Rom. x. 19) Moses is 
named as the speaker and writer. For our Lord and his apostles 
conceive of the Thorah as might be expected of them as members 
of their nation : it is to them the work of Moses. They regard it 
as proceeding from the revelation of God. But it is not yet God's 
full and final revelation, hence they intentionally emphasize the 
human side of its origin, without regard to the directness or 
indirectness of the authorship of Moses, which lay outside their 
exalted and practical object, and was, moreover, alien to the 
character of their age. It is important to us that they too were 
penetrated by the conviction that Moses was the mediator of the 
law through which Israel became the people of God ; but historico- 
critical investigation as to his share as author in the composition 
of the Pentateuch is left free, as far as N. T. statements are con- 
cerned." For at least three centuries the Mosaic authorship of 
parts of the Pentateuch has been in dispute. Spinoza, writing 
early in the seventeenth century (Spinoza's Works; Tractatus 
Theologico-Politieus, chap, viii.), pointed out features in the 
Pentateuch that seem irreconcilable with the theory of Mosaic 
authorship. 



56 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

prior to Moses.^ Thus, even if we accept the tra- 
dition which attributes the authorship of the Book 
of Genesis to Moses, he has recorded in it events 
which occurred from two to twenty-five centuries 
before his time. The question, therefore, that 
necessarily presents itself to the thoughtful reader 
is, How did he learn the facts the history of which 
he narrates ? Of course we may suppose that they 
were supematurally revealed to him.^ But there 
is nothing in the narrative to suggest this sup- 
position, unless it be the fact that we can conceive 
no other way in which he could have received in- 
fallible information concerning such events as the 
creation of the world and the deluge. The writer 
does not claim that his narrative is a revelation ; 
nor is this claim made for him by any subsequent 
Biblical writer. He does not say, as do the later 
prophets, " Thus saith the Lord " ; nor does any 
subsequent sacred writer affirm concerning these 
Genesis narratives that "the Lord spake unto 
Moses, saying." The only other opinion open to 
us is that the writer or compiler of Genesis availed 
himself of such material as existed in his time, and 

^ The creation is put in the popular chronology at 4004 B. C, 
the deluge at 2948, the call of Abraham at 1922, the death of 
Joseph at 1688. Of course to the modem scholar these dates are 
almost -wholly hypothetical, but that centuries elapsed between 
the event, whatever it was, which gave rise to the narrative of the 
deluge, and the writing of the narrative, is questioned by none. 

2 For an admirable pictorial representation of the way in which 
the story of the Creation might have been revealed to Moses, see 
Hugh Miller's Testimony of the Bocks, lecture iv. : The Mosaic 
Vision of Creation. 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 57 

that he used it with greater or less scientific and 
critical discrimination in preparing his history of 
this prehistoric period. 

It is true that it has been suggested that the 
actors in the events recorded in Genesis wrote 
accounts of those events, and that these narratives 
written by contemporaries and eyewitnesses were 
handed down from generation to generation until 
they came into the hands of Moses. When this 
hypothetical process of autobiography began, it is 
impossible even to surmise. It must suffice here 
to say that, even if we were to suppose that writing 
was an art known to Adam, and that this hypo- 
thetical collection of manuscript biographies began 
with him, we should get as a result only one form 
of a documentary hypothesis, since upon this theory 
the Book of Genesis would be compiled from pre- 
existing documents, which, on the possible but 
certainly unsubstantiated theory, had been with an 
almost miraculous care prepared and preserved for 
the use of the final editor. It is thus, even on the 
hypothesis of the traditionalist, almost certain that 
the Book of Genesis is composed of preexisting 
materials. It is scarcely necessary to add that he 
who disregards ancient tradition as of little scien- 
tific authority does not think that the Book of 
Genesis was written by Moses. He puts it at a 
much later date than 1450 b. c. I am inclined to 
think that it was the last written of the historical 
books of the Old Testament ; that, after the history 
of the ancient Hebrews, which begins with the 



58 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Exodus and ends with the Restoration, had been 
substantially completed, the Book of Grenesis, or 
the Book of Origins, — for such is the meaning of 
the word, — was compiled by some unknown editor 
as an introduction to the history which he or some 
one before him had compiled ; and that in so doing 
he rewrote the current traditions of this prehistoric 
period, much as Alfred Tennyson rewrote the Ar- 
thurian legends in the " Idylls of the King "; and 
that he did this for the purpose of emphasizing 
the truth that God is in his world. Not in any 
scientific accuracy in the narratives, are we to look 
for the evidence of prophetic inspiration, but in 
their witness to the faith of this prophetic people 
in the presence and rule of God in his world. And 
that inspiration is equally to be discerned in the 
narrative, whether we suppose it is composed of 
autobiographies by eye-witnesses or of current 
myths and legends, whether it was compiled by 
Moses about somewhere between 1250 B. c. and 
1450 B. c. or by an unknown prophet six, eight, 
or ten centuries later.^ 

1 " The first chapters of Genesis constitute a ' Book of the Begin- 
nings,' in accordance with the stories handed down in Israel from 
generation to generation, ever since the times of the Patriarchs, 
which, in all its essential affirmations, is parallel with the state- 
ments of the sacred hooks from the hanks of the Euphrates and 
Tigris. But, if this is so, I shall perhaps he asked, where then do 
you find the divine inspiration of the writers who made this archae- 
ology — that supernatural help by which, as a Christian, you must 
believe them to have been guided ? Where ? In the absolutely 
new spirit which animates their narration, even though the form 
of it may have remained in almost every respect the same as 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 59 

It seems, then, certain that, by whomsoever the 
Book of Genesis was compiled, it is composed of 
material which this compiler found ready to his 
hand. What is the character of this material? 
Was it composed by contemporaneous historians ? 
and is its value in its scientific accuracy ? Or did 
it grow up out of the observation, the imagination, 
and the thought of the race? and is its value in 
the moral lessons of which it is the vehicle ? In 
endeavoring to find the answer to these questions, 
let us turn, in the first place, to the narratives 
themselves. 

The first chapter of Genesis gives an account of 
the creation of the world. It is " a sublime epic 
of creation," a "hymn of praise to the Creator." 



among" the neighboring nations. It is the same narrative, and in 
it the same episodes succeed one another in like manner ; and yet 
one would be blind not to perceive that the signification has 
become altogether different. The exuberant polytheism which 
encumbers these stories among the Chaldaeans has been carefully 
eliminated, to give place to the severest monotheism. What 
formerly expressed naturalistic conceptions of a singular grossness 
here becomes the garb of moral truths of the most exalted and 
most purely spiritual order. The essential features of the form 
of the tradition have been preserved, and yet between the Bible 
and the sacred books of Chaldsea there is all the distance of one 
of the most tremendous revolutions which have ever been effected 
in human beliefs. Herein consists the miracle, and it is none the 
less amazing for being transposed. Others may seek to explain 
this by the simple natural progress of the conscience of humanity ; 
for myself, I do not hesitate to find in it the effect of a super- 
natural intervention of Divine Providence, and I bow before the 
God who inspired the Law and the Prophets." The Beginnings of 
History^ by Frangois Lenormant, preface, pp. xvi., xvii. 



60 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

A comparison of this chapter with such passages 
as Psalm xxxiii. 6-8 ; civ. ; or Pro v. viii. 24-30, 
will make clear to the English reader its poetical 
character. Its language is not scientific, accurate, 
technical ; it is figurative, poetic, the language of 
imagination. God broods upon the face of the 
water like a wind playing upon its surface ; he 
calls, and light comes forth out of the darkness ; 
he gives proper names to both light and darkness, 
calls one Day, the other Night ; he erects a firma- 
ment ^ to divide the waters above from the waters 
beneath ; he again divides the waters below from the 
land, and gives proper names to both earth and seas ; 
he speaks, and in the heavens above lights appear 
to illumine the earth. All this is language of 
poetry and of picture ; this is no scientific treatise 
or cosmogony ; it is a poet's sublime epic ; a paean 
to the Creator of the world.^ Whether it agrees 

^ See Ruskin's Modern Painters, part v. chapter vi. 

2 " Sometimes the prose of the Bible is equal to the best poetry, 
and blends truth and beauty in perfect harmony. It approaches 
also, in touching the highest themes, the rythmical form of Hebrew 
poetry, and may be arranged according to the parallelism of 
members. Moses was a poet as well as a historian. ... In this 
wider sense the Bible begins and ends with poetry. The retro- 
spective vision of the first creation, and the prospective vision of 
the new heavens and new earth, are presented in language which 
rises to the summit of poetic beauty and power." Commentary on 
the Holy Scriptures, by J. P. Lange, vol. vii. of Old Testament, 
on Job ; from Gen. Int. to the Poetical Books, by Philip Schaff, 
p. ix. 

"This sublime Epic of Creation, with its boldly figurative 
imagery and poetic grandeur of conception and expression, has 
been subjected to a style of interpretation, suited only to a plain 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 61 

with the latest conclusions of scientists concerning 
the order of the processes of evolution by which 
the world was developed from star-dust is a ques- 
tion as little pertinent to the chapter as would be 
the question whether geographical exploration indi- 
cates any locality for the Purgatory and the Para- 
dise of Dante.^ 

The second and third chapters, containing ac- 
counts of the creation and fall of man, are equally 
characterized, not by the spirit of a scientific inves- 
tigator into the problems of anthropology, but by 
a naive, childlike, and yet divine imagination. Man 
is fashioned, sculptor-like, out of clay, and a breath 
of life is breathed into him. The animals are 
brought to him to be named ; among them all there 
is no one fit to be a companion to him. So, while 
he sleeps, a rib is taken from him,^ and from the 

and literal record of the ordinary occurrences of life. Hence not 
only its true spirit, but its profound teacliings, have been mis- 
conceived and misinterpreted ; and its exhibition of the mysteries 
of creative power, which science traces in its own observation of 
Nature, have been confounded with popular misapprehensions, 
irreconcilable with the well-known facts of science." The Book of 
Genesis^ with Explanatory Notes, by Thomas J. Conant, p. xvi. 

^ The correspondence is undoubtedly extraordinary — " Every 
great feature in the structure of the planet corresponds with the 
order of events narrated in the sacred history." Professor Silli- 
man, Outline of Geological Lectures appended to BakewelVs Geology, 
p. 67, note. But as an exact scientific account of the creation it 
is not, in all minor details, strictly accurate. See Science and 
Hebrew Tradition^ essays iv. and v., T. H. Huxley. 

2 The poetic character of this conception is artistically illus- 
trated by Ghiberti in the bronze doors at Florence, in which he 
represents the angels bringing Eve to the Creator, from Adam's 



62 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

rib a woman is formed. Husband and wife, they 
are put into a garden ; tbe great world lies outside. 
In the garden are two trees of which they may not 
eat. The fruit of one will give them a knowledge 
of good and evil ; the fruit of the other will endow 
them with immortality. A serpent comes into the 
garden, not crawling on his belly, but erect — 
though how erect it is difficult to conceive. He 
persuades the too confiding woman ; she persuades 
the too pliant man ; they both eat the fruit of the 
first tree, discover that they are naked, lose their 
childhood innocence, are ashamed, make for them- 
selves aprons, are afraid of their God whose voice 
they hear in the cool of the evening as he walks in 
the garden, and try to hide themselves from him 
among the trees. Like children discovered in a 
fault, they come when summoned, excuse themselves 
in vain by casting the fault, the man on the woman, 
the woman on the serpent, and are cast out from 
the garden because they have become as a god by 
knowing good and evil, and lest they become still 
more as a god by being immortal. How this gar- 
den is so fenced in from the outer world that nei- 
ther they nor their descendants can ever return to 
it, nor even discover where it is, is left to conjec- 
ture, as surely no scientific writer would have left 
it. The garden disappears absolutely from the 
face of the earth, and never again is mentioned in 

side. See Mrs. Jameson's History of our Lord in Art, i. 96, 97. 
As poetry the idea is beautiful ; as history, both incredible and 
repulsive. 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 63 

the sacred history, or in any other. The man and 
his wife go out into the wilderness to fight life's 
battle with thistle-bearing nature ; children are 
born to them ; cities are discovered in the wilder- 
ness : whence come they ? Cain is married : where 
did he get his wife ? The question is an oft-repeated 
one — foolish if this story is imagination, not fool- 
ish if it is or purports to be a scientific history of 
the origin of the human race. 

It is absolutely certain that if one were to come 
upon this story in Greek, Latin, or Scandinavian 
literature, one would not hesitate a moment how to 
classify it. This, he would say, is a myth of won- 
derful beauty : What is its significance ? What 
does it mean ? The scientific or literary student of 
the Old Testament sees no reason for refusing to 
apply the same standards to this story in Hebrew 
literature which he would apply if he found it in 
any other. He reaches without hesitation the same 
conclusion, and addresses himself to the same ques- 
tion : Why did the writer tell this story ? What 
life-lesson is it intended to convey ? To him it is 
like Tennyson's story of the Holy Grail. As in 
the one case he wastes no time in answering the 
question whether the cup out of which Christ drank 
was still in existence in Arthur's time, or whether, 
if it were, a search for it would be profitable, but 
in the poem sees a beautiful vehicle of a yet more 
beautiful spiritual lesson, so in this prose-poem of 
the first sin and its consequences he sees no history 
of the origin of evil, no philosophy of sin and its 



64 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

historic cause, nor does he care to inquire where 
was this fabled garden of innocence, or how, scien- 
tifically, one fruit could possibly endow with im- 
mortality a human body or another fruit could 
endow with godlike knowledge of moral distinc- 
tions a human soul ; he sees in the story a casket, 
opens it, and finds within a portraiture of the life- 
drama of sin, fall, and redemption in miniature. 

The same epic character is scarcely less appar- 
ent in the rest of Genesis, which is composed of a 
series of narratives the value of which depends, 
not upon their scientific answer to historical pro- 
blems, but upon their naive dramatic quality and 
their vital human interest. Such are its stories of 
the marriage of the sons of Grod to the daughters 
of men ; of the deluge, in the mind of the narrator 
clearly overspreading the whole habitable globe ; of 
an ark large enough and seaworthy enough to con- 
tain specimens of the whole animal race, who for 
seven months live in accord, a happy family ; of 
Abraham receiving Jehovah's angelic messengers 
and feeding them at his tent ; of Jacob with his 
treachery to his father and its penalty, with his ro- 
mantic courtship and its reward; of Joseph, the 
dreamer, in the pit, in the prison, in the palace. 
These stories we study, not for the purpose of secur- 
ing historical data on which we can rely with un- 
failing certainty, but for the interest which they 
awaken and for the life-lessons which they convey. 
They are neither factual nor philosophical ; neither 
written to give scientific information concerning 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 65 

the past nor to bear witness to some philosophical 
theory which the writer desires to maintain ; they 
are written by one interested in life and for the 
purpose of conveying to others the interest which 
he himself possesses. 

Thus the literary or scientific student of the Bible 
finds in the Book of Genesis a clear illustration and 
a cogent confirmation of the principles which I 
have stated in the preceding chapter. He finds 
this book composed of narratives which are epic or 
dramatic in their character, and it is quite clear 
that these narratives existed in some form long 
prior to the earliest date at which the Book of Gene- 
sis could have been composed or compiled. 

But, further than this, his analysis makes clear 
to him the constituent elements of which the book 
is compiled. It shows him unmistakably in many 
instances that the narrative which he reads in the 
book is composed of two or more narratives, which 
previously existed, and which have been harmo- 
nized and woven together in one narrative by the 
editor or author of Genesis. That there are two 
such accounts of the creation will appear evident 
to most readers of the English Bible. The first 
account, contained in the first chapter and the first 
three verses of the second chapter, lays stress on 
the creation of the physical globe, represents God 
as creating man, male and female, in one act of 
creation, as making subject to them the powers of 
nature and the various animal races, and as conse- 
crating the seventh or Sabbath day at the close of 



66 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

the whole creative period. The second account, 
beginning with the fourth verse of the second 
chapter of Genesis, passes by the creation of the 
heavens and the earth with a mere allusion, gives 
in detail the creation of man, represents the crea- 
tion of woman as a companion for man as a sub- 
sequent event, if not an afterthought, and makes 
this whole story introductory to the drama of a 
first sin and the consequent expulsion from the 
garden. 

It is not equally apparent to the casual student 
that there are two accounts of the deluge, because 
those two accounts have been by the editor woven 
into one; but modern scholars have shown that 
it is possible to separate this narrative into its con- 
stituent parts. If they have not proved that the 
narrative is composed of two preexisting narra- 
tives, they have at least demonstrated that it may 
have been so composed. I can best exhibit this 
demonstration by repeating here the two stories of 
the deluge, as the modern scholar discovers them 
in the one story which we now possess : ^ 

ELOHIST ]S"AIlKATrVE OF THE DELUGE 

These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a 
righteous man, (and) perfect in his generations : Noah 
walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, 
Ham, and Japheth. And the earth was corrupt before 
Grod, and the earth was filled with violence. And God 

1 These two accounts are taken from the Analysis of Genesis 
in Genesis of Genesis, Professor B. W. Bacon, p. 109. 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 67 

saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt ; for all flesh 
had corrupted his way upon the earth. 

And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is 
come before me ; for the earth is filled with violence 
through them ; and, behold, I will destroy them with 
the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood : rooms 
shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within 
and without with pitch. And this is how thou shalt 
make it : The length of the ark three hundred cubits, 
the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it 
thirty cubits. A light shalt thou make to the ark, 
and to a cubit shalt thou finish it upward ; and the 
door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; 
with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. 
And I, behold, I do bring the flood of waters upon the 
earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, 
from under the heaven ; everything that is in the earth 
shall die. But I will establish my covenant with thee ; 
and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, 
and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of 
every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt 
thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee ; 
they shall be male and female. Of the fowl after their 
kind, and of the cattle after their kind, of every creep- 
ing thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort 
shall come unto thee to keep them alive. And take 
thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and gather it to 
thee ; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. 
Thus did Noah ; according to all that God commanded 
him, so did he. 

And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood 
of waters was upon the earth. 

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second 



68 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same 
day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, 
and the windows of heaven were opened. 

In the self-same day entered Noah, and Shem, and 
Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, 
and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark ; 
they, and every beast after its kind, and all the cattle 
after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth 
upon the earth after its kind, and every fowl after its 
kind, every bird of every sort. And they went in unto 
Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh wherein is 
the breath of life. And they that went in, went in male 
and female of all flesh, as God commanded him : And 
the flood was forty days upon the earth. And the waters 
prevailed, and increased greatly upon the earth ; and the 
ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters 
prevailed exceedingly upon the earth ; and all the high 
mountains that were under the whole heaven were cov- 
ered. Fifteen cubits upward did the water prevail; 
and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died 
that moved upon the earth, both fowl, and cattle, and 
beast, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the 
earth, and every man. And the waters prevailed upon 
the earth an hundred and fifty days. 

JAHVIST NAKRATIYE OF THE DELUGE 

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on 
the face of the ground, and daughters were born unto 
them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men 
that they were fair ; and they took them wives of aU 
that they chose. And Jahweh said, My spirit shall not 
strive with man forever, for that he also is flesh : yet 
shall his days be an hundred and twenty years. The 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 69 

Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after 
that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters 
of men, and they bare children to them : the same were 
the mighty men which were of old, the men of renown. 
And Jahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great 
in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts 
of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented 
Jahweh that he had made man on the earth, and it 
grieved him at his heart. And Jahweh said, I will 
destroy man whom I have created from the face of 
the ground ; both man, and beast, and creeping thing, 
and fowl of the air ; for it repenteth me that I have 
made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of 
Jahweh. 

And Jahweh said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy 
house into the ark ; for thee have I seen righteous before 
me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt 
take to thee seven and seven, the male and his female ; 
and of the beasts that are not clean two, the male and 
his female ; of the fowl also of the air, seven and seven, 
male and female : to keep seed alive upon the face of 
aU the earth. For yet seven days, and I will cause it 
to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights ; and 
every living thing that I have made will I destroy from 
off the face of the ground. And Noah did according 
unto all that Jahweh commanded him. 

And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and 
his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the 
waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that 
are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that 
creepeth upon the ground, there went in two and two 
unto Noah into the ark, male and female, as God com- 
manded Noah. And Jahweh shut him in. And it came 



70 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

to pass, after the seven days, that the waters of the flood 
were upon the earth. And the rain was upon the earth 
forty days and forty nights. And the waters increased, 
and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. 
All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that 
was in the dry land, died. And every living thing was 
destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both 
men, and cattle, and creeping thing, and fowl of the 
heaven ; and they were destroyed from the earth ; and 
Noah only was left, and they that were with him in 
the ark. 

So complete are these two accounts that it is 
probable that if on a Sunday morning any clergy- 
man were to read either one from the Bible, a 
considerable proportion of his congregation would 
not know that he had not read the entire Biblical 
account. And yet in these parallel narratives, as 
here printed, nothing in either account is borrowed 
from the other ; both are to be found entire in the 
one Biblical narrative. It is true, as I have said, 
that this fact does not demonstrate that the Biblical 
narrative was in fact composed of two independent 
and preexistent narratives; it only demonstrates 
that it may have been so composed.^ But when 
we reflect that there are clearly two accounts of 
the creation ; that the subsequent history in the 
Bible can be separated into two narratives, much 

1 Professor William Henry Green of Princeton has ingeniously 
analysed the parable of the Prodigal Son into two continuous 
narratives, in order to show that the possibility of such a division 
of a continuous narrative is not of itself a demonstration of its 
composite character. See Anti-Higher Criticism, p. 66. 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 71 

as the story of the deluge is here separated, though 
not generally as clearly; that the separation is 
made for us by the historians themselves in the 
later history of Israel, in the Books of Kings and 
of Chronicles ; that throughout the entire Biblical 
history the distinctions notable in these narratives 
can be discerned ; that one is characterized by the 
priestly and the other by the prophetic spirit ; 
that it is by such compilations that most Oriental 
histories are composed ; and that, finally, there is 
only the traditional belief as to the origin and 
authorship of the Biblical books to counteract 
these cumulative considerations — if we adopt the 
literary or scientific method of Bible study, we 
shall almost certainly accept the conclusion of the 
modern or scientific student that the Bible narra- 
tives, as we now possess them, have been composed 
in the manner here illustrated from preexisting 
material, though the preexisting material cannot 
always be as easily discriminated as in these early 
Genesis narratives. 

This opinion is further confirmed by the fact that 
the archaeologists have discovered, in a literature 
which dates prior to the time of Moses, accounts 
of the creation, the temptation and faU of man, 
the tower of Babel and consequent dispersion, and 
the Deluge, which differ very radically in their 
spirit, but not very radically in their historical or 
scientific details, from the Genesis accounts. From 
data not necessary to go into here, the scholars fix 
the date of the Assyrian tablets containing these 



72 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

legends as from 1500 b. c. to 2000 b. c.^ Similar 
accounts, dating so far back in history that their 
age is wholly problematical, are to be found in the 
tradition of other nations. One legend copied here 
from an Assyrian tablet, as deciphered by George 
Smith, may suffice as an illustration of this prehis- 
toric material of other nations, much of which was 
certainly in existence before the time when Genesis 
could have been written. 

THE ASSYRIAN STOKY OF THE DELUGE 

1. The surface of the earth is swept. 

2. It destroyed aU life from the face of the earth. 

3. The strong deluge over the people reached to 
heaven. 

4. Brother saw not his brother, they did not know 
the people. In heaven 

5. the gods feared the tempest and 

6. sought refuge ; they ascended to the heaven of Anu. 

7. The gods hke dogs in droves prostrate. 

19. Six days and nights 

20. passed, the wind, deluge, and storm overwhehned. 

21. On the seventh day in its course was calmed the 
storm and all the deluge 

22. which had destroyed like an earthquake, 

23. quieted. The sea he caused to dry, and the wind 
and deluge ended. 

24. I perceived the sea making a tossing ; 

25. and the whole of mankind turned to corruption, 

26. like reeds the corpses floated. 

^ See The Chaldcean Account of Genesis, by George Smith, 
chaps, i. and ii. 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 73 

27. I opened the window, and the light broke over 
my face. 

28. it passed. I sat down and wept. 

38. I sent forth a dove and it left. The dove went 
and turned, and 

39. a resting-place it did not find, and it returned. 

40. I sent forth a swallow and it left. The swallow 
went and turned, and 

41. a resting-place it did not find, and it returned. 

42. I sent forth a raven and it left. 

43. The raven went, and the decrease of the water it 
saw, and 

44. It did eat, it swam and wandered away, and did 
not return. 

45. I sent the animals forth to the four winds, I 
poured out a libation. 

46. I built an altar on the peak of the mountain. 

The careful reader will discern in this narrative 
the historical resemblance and the spiritual contrast 
to the narrative in Genesis. In both are the flood, 
the earthquake, the wholesale destruction of life, 
the dove, the raven, the mountain peak, the altar, 
and the sacrifice ; and it may be assumed that in 
the hiatus between line 7 and line 19 in the As- 
syrian account there has been some reference to a 
boat or ark in which the narrator has been pre- 
served and from which he subsequently sends forth 
the birds. But, on the other hand, in the Hebrew 
account God sends the flood upon the earth as a 
punishment for sin ; in the Assyrian account the 
moral element appears to be whoUy lacking, and 



74 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

the gods themselves flee terrified to the heavens for 
refuge from the storm which they cannot control. 
It is in this spiritual significance of the narrative, 
not in its scientific or historical accuracy, that its 
value inheres. The hypothesis that the unknown 
writer of Genesis took these early legends and re- 
wrote them, writing God into them, or that the 
people retold them with the national consciousness 
of God wrought into them, is far more probable 
and quite as spiritual as the hypothesis that these 
narratives were supernaturally revealed to the his- 
torian, or that they were miraculously preserved 
and handed down from generation to generation 
until they reached him as an infallible record of 
events long anterior. 

Why should we think that the Hebrew prehis- 
toric history is not composed like the prehistoric 
history of all other peoples of legends and myths ? 
It appears to be. Is there anything in the use of 
legend and myth to cast discredit on the spiritual 
value of this Book of Origins ? What is legend ? 
What is myth? 

A legend is a non-historical narrative handed 
down through the early ages by word of mouth. It 
invariably has some historical basis ; but imagina- 
tion has so modified, ornamented, and perhaps 
exaggerated it that it is generally impossible to 
determine accurately how much of fact and how 
much of unconscious fiction enters into it. It is 
not, indeed, without historical value. " Tradition," 
says Professor Karl Budde, " in numberless cases 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 75 

clothes genuine history in forms which at first sight 
appear to deserve no confidence at all. The task 
of the historian is first of all to understand the tra- 
dition. When it is correctly understood, he will 
not throw it away, but will make use of it in the 
proper sense and in the proper place. In this way 
tradition is transformed into history." ^ Neverthe- 
less, the value of the legends of an ancient people 
is not in the accuracy of the narrative. Is it true 
that Alfred the Great had his ears boxed because 
he did not turn the scone when it was sufficiently 
baked? We do not know. But the story could 
not have arisen concerning Alfred the Great except 
in a community which had within itself the elements 
of that democratic character which has character- 
ized the Anglo-Saxon people in all ages of the 
world. Did William Tell shoot the arrow from his 
son's head ? Probably not. But the story could 
not have arisen except among a people loving 
independence and daring everything to win and 
maintain it. Did Pocahontas save the life of John 
Smith by throwing lierself prostrate upon him? 
We cannot now tell. But there is in the story a 
precursor of that cosmopolitan character overrun- 
ning all lines of race and religion which has 
characterized the American people in its history 
from that time to this. These legends of an early 
date indicate the character of the people, and in 
this lies their value. It is in this that the value of 

1 Beligion of Israel to the Exile, by Professor Karl Budde, Lec- 
ture i. p. 2. 



76 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

the Hebrew legends lies. They are not scientific 
records of an age so remote that no scientific 
investigation can give us trustworthy historical 
information concerning it ; but they are indica- 
tions that the spiritual temper of this people 
characterized their earliest consciousness as it is 
manifested in these stories of their prehistoric life. 
The myth, on the other hand, is the attempt of 
a primitive people to state an abstract truth in a 
concrete form. For primitive people, like children, 
cannot conceive an abstract truth ; they can con- 
ceive only in concrete illustration. Sometimes to 
express such truth they take a legend, pour the 
truth into it, and it becomes a mythical legend; 
sometimes they invent the story to interpret the 
truth — it is then a mythical poem or fiction. The 
Greeks wished to express the truth that love is rich 
in itself, but poor in its possessions. Love, they 
said, has Resource for his father and Poverty for 
his mother. 

" Love then, as being the child of Poverty and Re- 
source, has a strange fate. He is always poor ; and so 
far from being delicate and fair, as most people suppose, 
is rough and squaHd, unsandaled and homeless, sleeping 
upon the bare earth beneath the open sky, and, accord- 
ing to his mother's nature, is always mated to want. 
But, on the other hand, as he takes after his father, he 
aims at the beautiful and the good, and is brave, vigor- 
ous, and energetic, clever in the pursuit of his object, 
skillful in invention, passionately fond of knowledge, 
and fertile in resource, unceasingly devoted to the search 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 77 

after wisdom, and withal an inveterate trickster, charla- 
tan, and sophist/' ^ 

This is a myth. The philosophic moralist of to- 
day would say, Love has no promise of the outer 
world, but has resources within itself ; the Greek 
said, Poverty and Resource married ; Love was 
bom to them, and inherited poverty from the one 
and resource from the other. 

Three great problems have confronted men from 
the earliest ages : the origin of the cosmos ; the 
cause of the differences in human character and 
condition, including the problem of sin and its con- 
sequences ; and the future destiny of man. The 
modern philosopher gives his answers to these ques- 
tions in abstract form ; the primitive peoples, in 
concrete narratives. Our answers are philosophy ; 
theirs were myths. Such myths are generally un- 
conscious growths ; Plato furnishes an illustration 
of the method of their growth by his naive and 
probably not serious plan for manufacturing one. 
He says : — 

'^ All ye who are in the State, we will say to them fol- 
lowing out our fiction, are brethren ; but God when he 
moulded you, at the time of your birth, mixed gold in 
the substance of all you who were fit to rule, and there- 
fore they are the most honored. He infused silver in 
the military caste, iron and bronze in the husbandmen 
and craftsmen generally. The offspring of these sev- 
eral classes will, as a general rule, preserve the character 

^ From The Symposium of Plato as rendered by Bishop West- 
cott in The History o/Eeligious Thought in the West, pp. 7, 8. 



78 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

of their parents. But if the signs of silver or gold 
appear in the children of the bronze or iron castes, they 
must then be raised to their due places. And if bronze 
or iron appear where we look for gold, that too must be 
reduced to its proper rank.^' 

He adds : — 

" We shall not persuade the first generation that it is 
so, but it may be in time that their descendants will be- 
lieve our tale. And the belief would contribute greatly 
to the good of the State and to the good of one another." ^ 

The early history of all peoples is in legends ; 
the early philosophy of all peoples is in myths. 
There is no reason to believe that the Hebrew 
people are any exception to this otherwise universal 
rule. When the literary critic says that the Book 
of Genesis is a collection of legends and myths, he 
does not stigmatize it as valueless.^ He affirms 

1 Ibid., pp. 9, 10. 

2 Bishop Westcott points out the providential use of the myth, 
and indirectly indicates that it might well be used as a vehicle for 
the conveyance of divine truth in a divinely inspired writing'. 
From his suggestive essay on The Myths of Plato, above referred 
to, which is well worthy of the student's careful reading, I quote 
a few sentences. " Thus there are two problems with which the 
Platonic myths deal, the origin and destiny of cosmos, and the 
origiu and destiny of man. Both problems obviously transcend 
all experience and all logical processes of reason. But no less both 
are ever present to the student of life, though he may neglect them 
in the investigation of details or deliberately set them aside as 
hopelessly insoluble " (p. 11). " Whatever may be the prevail- 
ing fashion of an age, the Myths of Plato remain an tmfailing 
testimony to the religious wants of man. They show not only that 
reason by its logical processes is unable to satisfy them, but also in 
what directions its weakness is most apparent and least support- 



PREHISTORIC TRADITIONS REWRITTEN 79 

that its value lies, not in the historical or scientific 
accuracy of its stories, but in the indications which 
they afford of the pre-natal character of this He- 
brew people, and in the spiritual truths of which 
these stories are the vehicle. What these indica- 
tions are, what that truth is, I have already indi- 
cated. The story of creation is not a scientific 
treatise on cosmogony. When neighboring peoples 
deified nature, worshiping the sun and moon and 
stars, the birds and beasts, the sacred river Nile, 
the cattle that browsed upon its shore, the croco- 
diles that swam in its waters, and the very beetles 
which crawled along its banks, the Hebrew myth 
of creation embodied the truth that God is Spirit, 
and Spirit is creative ; that God has made man 
in his own image; that of created beings man 
alone is divine ; and that nature, which by pagan 
religions men were taught abjectly fco worship, is 
man's serf whom he is to tame, harness, and make 
do his bidding. The Hebrew myth of Eden em- 
bodied the truth that sin is willful disobedience of 
law ; that conscience makes cowards of us all ; 
that between sin and the human soul is to be eter- 
nal and undying hate ; that sin will corrupt the 

able. They form, as it were, a natural scheme of the questions 
■with which a revelation might he expected to deal, — Creation, 
Providence, Immortality, — which as they lie farthest from the 
reason, lie nearest to the heart. And in doing- this, they are so far 
an unconscious prophecy of which the teaching- of Christianity is 
the fulfillment. . . . But more than this : the Myths mark also the 
shape which a revelation for men might be expected to take. 
The doctrine is conveyed in an historic form : the ideas are of- 
fered as facts ; the myth itself is the message " (ibid., pp. 48, 49). 



80 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

whole human race, but that the human race will 
destroy sin, or, to relate it in the language of the 
myth, the serpent shall poison the heel of man, and 
man shall crush the serpent's head. The Hebrew 
myth of the expulsion from the garden embodied 
the truth that sorrow is disciplinary, and the road 
from the garden of innocence to the victory of vir- 
tue is through the struggle of the wilderness. The 
Hebrew myth of the deluge embodied the truth 
that destruction of sinners can never cure the world 
of sin. The Hebrew myth of Abraham taught the 
truth that he who seeks God shall find him, and 
that to find him no sacrifice of home or friends or 
child is or can be too great ; the Hebrew myth of 
Jacob, that God is the God of sinner as well as 
of saint, and remembers his mercies unto children's 
children of such as love him and keep his com- 
mandments; the myth of Joseph, that he is the 
Providence of all who put their trust in him — 
God in Egypt as in the Holy Land, in Pharaoh's 
prison and Pharaoh's palace, God of gods and 
Lord of lords. 

This ancient compilation of prehistoric myths 
and legends is valuable, not because of any scien- 
tific addition which it makes to our knowledge of 
early history, but because it shows us the conscious- 
ness of God in the early experiences of that re- 
markable people to whom more than to all other 
peoples combined the world owes its knowledge of 
God, its standards of righteousness, and its im- 
pulse to the divine life. 



CHAPTEE IV 

THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 

It is a common belief among primitive peoples 
that their code of laws was dictated to the law- 
givers by a god or the gods. This seems to have 
been the opinion of the ancient Hebrews concern- 
ing their system of laws contained in the Books of 
Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. 
That opinion has passed over into the Christian 
Church, where it has been widely held that this 
entire code, with all its complex regulations respect- 
ing both civil life and ecclesiastical offices, was 
given by Jehovah to Moses and reduced by him to 
writing. According to this view, the entire code, 
civil and ecclesiastical, dates from about 1450 b. c.^ 
Eef erences in these codes to conditions that did not 
exist until long after the death of Moses are sup- 
posed to have been prophetic and preparatory for 
conditions yet to come. Some of the scholars of the 
olden time even maintained that the account of 
the death of Moses, contained in the last chapter of 
Deuteronomy, was written by Moses prophetically 
before the death occurred, though no one, I think, 

1 Or according to modern chronology 1250 B. c. See chrono- 
logical table on page xi. 



82 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

any longer entertains that opinion. It is generally- 
conceded by the most conservative critics that this 
postlude to the book, and perhaps some other 
special provisions scattered through the Pentateuch 
which are wholly inapplicable to the nomadic life 
of the wilderness, were added by an unknown 
writer subsequent to the death of Moses.^ 

The modern critic believes that no part of these 
law books was written by Moses in their present 
form ; that they contain laws and prescribe customs 
which grew up gradually among the Hebrew people 
during a checkered history of nearly ten centuries ; 
that while the oldest portion of the codes of which 
these books are composed probably embodies sub- 
stantially his teaching, the latest civil code, as we 
have it in Deuteronomy, was not formulated until 

^ This is the substantially unanimous opinion of scholars who 
insist upon the Mosaic authorship of the rest of the book, e. g. : 
"This chapter could not he written by Moses himself, but was 
added by Joshua or Eleazar, or, as Patrick conjectures, by Samuel, 
who was a prophet, and wrote by divine authority what he found 
in the records of Joshua, and his successors, the judges." Matthew 
Henry, Coinmentary on Deut. xxsiv. 1-14. " It seems most proba- 
ble, and is commonly believed, that this chapter was not written 
by Moses, but by Eleazar or Joshua, or Ezra, or some other man of 
Grod, directed herein by the Holy Ghost ; this being no more im- 
peachment to the Divine authority of this chapter, that the pen- 
man is unknown, which also is the lot of some other books of 
Scripture, than it is to the authority of the acts of the king or 
parliament, that they are written or printed by some unknown 
person." Pool's Annotations, vol. i. p. 407. The thoughtful reader 
will probably observe that this argument applies with as much 
force to the whole Book of Deuteronomy as to a single supple- 
mentary chapter of the book. 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 83 

about the year 620 b. c, and the final ecclesiastical 
code, as contained in the Levitical or Canon law, 
and especially in the Book of Leviticus, was not 
formulated as we now possess it until about the 
year 525 b. c. These dates, of course, are only 
approximate ; for it is not supposed that the exact 
year of the completion of any of the codes can now 
be ascertained. It will thus be seen that the ques- 
tion between the old and the new view of the Bible 
is more than one of mere dates or authorship. It 
is not the question, as it has been humorously de- 
fined, whether the Pentateuch was written by 
Moses or by another man named Moses ; it is the 
question whether the books constituting the Penta- 
teuch were given at one time and through one 
prophet, as the Mohammedans believe was the case 
with the Koran, or whether they record the growth 
of a great people under the guidance and inspira- 
tion of God. This is not a mere literary question. 
It is distinctively a theological, and in some sense 
a religious, question. I hold the second of these 
two opinions ; and in this and the next article I 
propose to elucidate this opinion more fully. 

The parallel between a nation and an individual 
is a very familiar one, at least as old as Plato. 
The nation grows as the individual grows. Man 
has been described as a " bundle of habits." That 
is not quite an accurate description. He inherits 
something from his forefathers. Then on that in- 
heritance he begins to build character. Action 
frequently repeated becomes a habit; habit long 



84 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

continued becomes a second nature ; and this second 
nature, the product of habit long continued incor- 
porated in and mixed with what he has inherited, 
makes the man what he is. He may in this pro- 
cess of growth write down resolutions, as Jonathan 
Edwards did, and endeavor to live up to them; 
but the man is not made by the resolutions he 
writes ; he is made by the life he lives ; and the 
resolutions which he writes are both a product of 
the preceding life and an impulse and a guidance 
to the life that lies before him. In a similar 
manner grows the nation. It starts with certain 
racial peculiarities. It is an Anglo-Saxon race, or 
a Latin race, or a Semitic race. This is its in- 
heritance, and on this inheritance it builds its 
character. In the building of this character, first 
comes custom ; for what habit is to the individual, 
custom is to the nation ; after this custom has been 
long repeated, so that it has entered into and 
formed a part of the national character, it is not 
infrequently reduced to writing. Sometimes this 
is done early in its history ; sometimes some pro- 
phet arises who sees in advance of his fellows and 
reduces to writing that which he thinks the nation 
ought to aim to be. But the nation is not made 
by its written constitution or its written laws, it is 
made by its custom ; it is not made by what it 
resolves it will do, nor by what some one says it has 
done or ought to do ; it is made by what in point 
of fact it does. For the nation, like the individual, 
is built up by the processes of life itself. 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 85 

In this process there may be, and often are, 
critical periods ; there may be, and often are, im- 
portant writings. The Magna Charta was one 
such in England ; the Constitutions of Clarendon 
were another. But the nation is not made by 
these ; these help to form its constitution only so 
far as they are actually embodied in its real life. 
If it has a written constitution, as we profess to 
have, still its real character is determined not by 
the writing, but by the life, and it changes its 
constitution by its life, whether it incorporates 
those changes in the written document or not. We 
as an American people are to-day, not what Hamil- 
ton and Madison said we ought to be ; we are what 
we have been, what our national life has made us. 
Even our written Constitution itself is changed by 
other processes than those of formal amendment. 
It has been often said by jurists that Chief Justice 
Marshall has done as much to make the real Con- 
stitution of the United States what it is, though he 
never wrote a line of it, as did any of its framers.^ 
We have recently passed through an epoch in 
which we have incorporated a very important ele- 
ment in our National Constitution. The question 

^ " The task which Marshall had to perform was the arduous 
one of construction ; fortunately he had to a very striking degree 
the constructive faculty, a rare gift, and certainly the highest 
form of intellectual ability which lawyers can ever use and dis- 
play." John Marshall, Allan B. Magruder, p. 165. The very 
words here used, " constructive " and " construction," indicate the 
recognized function of a chief justice, which is to construct the 
constitution by the very process of interpreting it. 



86 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

arose whether a representative might be excluded 
by Congress from his seat in Congress because he 
was a polygamist. He had been unquestionably 
elected by a majority of the district which he 
claimed to represent. One party in Congress said : 
No ! the district has an absolute and final right to 
select whom it will, and if the man thus selected 
has the three qualifications, age, residence, and 
citizenship, without which no man can enter Con- 
gress, he must be admitted, no matter what his 
character. The other party replied : Every man 
in the House of Representatives represents not 
only his State, but the Nation, and although the 
initiative comes from the State, the Nation possesses 
a veto power, and can refuse to allow a man who 
is living in open violation of the laws of his State 
and the moral sentiment of the Nation to represent 
the Nation in its legislative body ; and the House 
of Representatives, by a vote of 286 to 50, decided 
that Congress, that is, the Nation through Con- 
gress, had such a veto power over the action of any 
particular State. In the future this is the Con- 
stitution of the United States. It has been made 
so by the decision of a body in whom the consti- 
tutional power of rendering that decision has been 
vested. Thus the government, whether it has a 
vrritten constitution or not, grows by means of 
decisions more or less formally registered and 
more or less fully carried out in the national life. 
The protection of our property and our person 
depends, not primarily upon the statutes that have 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 87 

been enacted by the legislatures of the various 
States, not primarily upon the statutes that have 
been enacted by the Congress of the United States, 
but upon what is known as the common law ; and 
the common law is nothing more or less than the 
customs which have grown up among the Anglo- 
Saxon people. It is thus evident that the Con- 
stitution and laws of the United States, and still 
more evident that those of Great Britain, are the 
product of a gradual growth, beginning, let us say, 
with Alfred the Great and continuing to the 
present time. 

The character of a nation, then, may be described 
as the result of three cooperating forces : first, a 
racial characteristic ; second, the acceptance by a 
nation in its birth-period, or one of its successive 
birth-periods, of a dominant principle — as auto- 
cracy by Russia, the supremacy of the State over the 
Church by England, the authority of the common 
people by the United States ; and, third, the na- 
tional habit, applying these fundamental principles 
to changed conditions, perhaps adding new and cog- 
nate principles, perhaps modifying those already 
accepted for better or worse, or departing from 
them more or less widely. Finally, this national 
habit is incorporated in writings — in the form 
either of text-books recognized as authoritative 
because they reflect the national organic will, or 
of judicial decisions authoritatively declaring that 
will, or of codes issued by legislative authority or 
approved by popular acquiescence and acceptance. 



88 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

It is, therefore, a great mistake to suppose that the 
authority of the law dates from the promulgation 
of the code. The code is generally the last step in 
the growth of the national law. It is not authori- 
tative because it is promulgated ; it promulgates 
what is already authoritative. In general, the 
codification of a system of laws marks the end, not 
the beginning, of its growth.^ When, therefore, the 
modern critic says that the Book of Deuteronomy 
was written b. c. 640, and the Book of Leviticus 
B. c. 525, he does not mean that the civil laws in- 
corporated in the one and the sacrificial system 

^ The reader will find these principles elucidated and illustrated 
by Sir Henry Maine in his Ancient Law, especially in chaps, i. 
and ii., from which I quote a few significant and suggestive 
sentences: "The Homeric word for a custom in the embryo is 
sometimes ' Themis ' (0e/iis) in the singular — more often 'Dike' 
(SIkt)), the meaning of which visibly fluctuates between a 'judg- 
ment' and a 'custom' or 'usage.' 'Nomos' (vo/xos), a Law, so 
great and famous a term in the political vocabulary of the later 
Greek society, does not occur in Homer." . . . " It is certain 
that, in the infancy of mankind, no sort of legislature, not even a 
distinct author of law, is contemplated or conceived of. Law has 
scarcely reached the footing of custom ; it is rather a habit. It 
is, to use a French phrase, ' in the air.' " . . . " The Hindoo Code, 
called the Laws of Menu, which is certainly a Brahmin compila- 
tion, undoubtedly enshrines many genuine observances of the 
Hindoo race, but the opinion of the best contemporary orientalists 
is, that it does not, as a whole, represent a set of rules ever actu- 
ally administered in Hrndostan. It is, in great part, an ideal 
picture of that which, in the view of the Brahmins, ought to be 
the law." ..." When primitive law has once been embodied in 
a code, there is an end to what may be called its spontaneous 
development. Henceforward the changes effected in it, if effected 
at aU, are effected deliberately and from without." Pp. 5, 7, 16, 
17, 20. 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 89 

incorporated in the other were then first instituted. 
He means rather that they were then first com- 
pleted, and so capable of being reduced to a 
codified form. 

As the modern State is the product of a gradual 
growth, so is the modern Church. Each denomi- 
nation is inclined, naturally, to carry back its 
dogmatic beliefs and its ecclesiastical usages to a 
remote time, and claim for them a divine origin ; 
to think itself born full grown. But each denomi- 
nation recognizes that the beliefs and usages of its 
neighbor have been gradually developed, by a pro- 
cess more or less lengthy and complex, from simple 
beginnings. Thus, whatever claim the Roman 
Catholic ecclesiastic may make for the divine 
origin of his church, the Protestant scholar un- 
hesitatingly traces in ecclesiastical history the 
successive steps by which that church has grown 
to its present complex faith, organization, and 
ritual. He tells us that the celibacy of the clergy, 
the adoration of the Virgin, and the use of images 
all date from the fourth century ; that Indulgence 
as a release from the pains and penalties of pur- 
gatory was not formally announced until the four- 
teenth century ; that the title " pope " was applied 
to all bishops in the primitive church, and that the 
supremacy of the bishop of Rome was not claimed 
until the fourth century, his infallibility was not 
asserted until about the eleventh, and was not 
authoritatively affirmed until the nineteenth. The 
canons of that church are equally the product of 



90 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

growth. The Decretum of Gratianus in the twelfth 
century was a codification partly of previous codes, 
partly of incongruous customs and inconsistent 
decrees, and has become in turn the basis of sub- 
sequent additions and modifications.^ Nor is i.t 
less certain that both the creeds and the ecclesias- 
tical usages of Protestant churches have in a similar 
manner grown up gradually. The creed has gen- 
erally been forged as a weapon supposed to be 
necessary for the defense of the preexisting faith ; ^ 
the canon has been tempered and fashioned into 
obligatory law out of what was at first only a 
convenient custom — and this whether it involves 
the authority of the bishop in Episcopacy or the 

^ For a good brief history of the canon law of the Roman 
Catholic Church, which may serve as an illustration of the prob- 
able process which preceded the final codification of the canon 
law of the Hebrew church in the Levitical code, see article Canon 
Law, in the EncyclopcBdia Britannica. 

^ Calvin's Institutes are a striking illustration of this truth, as 
may be seen from the following quotations : " We conclude, then, 
that it is not now left to faithful ministers to frame any new doc- 
trine, but that it behoves them simply to adhere to the doctrine 
to which God has made all subject, without any exception." 
Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin, trans, by John 
Allen, 6th Am. ed., vol. ii., bk. 4, chap. viii. § ix. "Upon this 
principle, those ancient councUs, such as the Council of Nice, 
of Constantinople, the first of Ephesus, that of Chalcedon, and 
others like them, which were held for the condemnation of errors, 
we cheerfully receive and reverence as sacred, as far as respects 
the articles of faith which they have defended ; for they contaia 
nothing but the pure and natural interpretation of the Scripture, 
which the holy fathers, with spiritual prudence, applied to the 
discomfiture of the enemies of religion who arose in those days." 
Ibid.j bk. 4, chap. ix. § viii. 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 91 

independence of the local church in Congrega- 
tionalism. 

The modern or evolutionary student of the Bible 
believes that both the civil and the ecclesiastical 
laws of the Hebrew people were developed in a simi- 
lar manner. As we now possess them in the Books 
of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, 
they are the product of ten centuries of national 
growth. Into their composition have entered four 
elements : (1) the character of the Hebrews as a 
peculiarly religious people, that is, one preeminent 
for their possession of a moral consciousness of 
God ; (2) the prophetic genius of the great founder 
of their nation, the prophet statesman Moses ; (3) 
the successive additions to the principles enunciated 
by him made by subsequent prophets possessed of 
a similar spirit, and successive applications of those 
principles, and in some cases departures from them, 
by the people into whose life they had entered; 
(4) and, finally, their codification in a substantially 
final form in the two great codes, — one the civil 
or Deuteronomic code, the other the ecclesiastical or 
Levitical code. To trace the origin and growth 
of these codes or systems of laws, and to interpret 
their fundamental principles, will be the object of 
this and the next article in this series. 

The founder of the Hebrew nation, and in some 
sense of its distinctive theology and its type of 
religion, was Moses. Who, then, was Moses ? A 
shadowy figure, so far in the remote past that in 
studying the details of his life it is impossible 



92 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

scientifically to separate the legendary from the 
historical. Yet it must not be forgotten in such a 
case that legends themselves indicate not less truly 
than do assured historical facts the essential ele- 
ments in the character of him around whom they 
have grown up.^ The story of his life, as we gather 
it from Biblical and extra-Biblical sources, is briefly 
as follows.^ Israel was an unorganized body of 

1 See, ante, chap. iii. pp. 74 fp. Substantially all critics recognize 
in Moses one of tlie greatest and most creative spirits of ancient 
history. Thus Renan, who speaks of him as " completely buried 
by the legends which have grown up over him," still recognizes 
him as " a colossus among the great m.ythical figures of humanity." 
History of the People of Israel, vol. i. p. 135. Dr. H. Oort re- 
gards him as the founder of the Hebrew Nation, and so of that 
spiritual movement which culminated in Christianity. " It is due 
to Moses in the first instance that the uncivilized hordes that wan- 
dered through the Arabian deserts in the thirteenth century before 
Christ, and afterwards conquered Canaan, finally produced such 
noble results." ... "In many respects his character was moulded 
by that of his age, but the direction which he gave to the powers 
of Israel opens a new era. Moses, the founder of the moral 
Yahweh-worship, stands at the head of the spiritual movement 
which culminated in him who said: Blessed are the pure in 
heart, for they shall see God ! " Bible for Learners, vol. i. pp. 
313, 325. Ewald recognizes the historical trustworthiness of the 
narrative in Exodus in its main incidents. "That Moses was 
brought up in Egyptian learning and knowledge, but yet, when 
driven to an act of patriotic indignation, obliged to flee to the 
peninsula of Sinai, and to take refuge with Midian (or, according 
to Hellenistic pronunciation, Madian), the ruling nation there, 
and that he formed a friendship with a prince of that people, 
Hobab (or Jethro), and married his daughter, is also in its present 
form reported only by the Third Narrator. But the narrative is 
without doubt based on geniiine history." The History of Israel^ 
by Heinrich Ewald, vol. ii. pp. 42, 43. 

2 The original authorities for a study of the life of Moses are 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 93 

slaves under a remorseless despotism. The inhu- 
man ill usage which still characterizes the despotism 
of Egypt remains a mournful illustration of the 
simple statement of the Hebrew historian, " There- 
fore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict 
them with their burdens." The echo of their cry 
by reason of their taskmasters is still to be heard 
in the melancholy antiphonal wail sung in a weird 
chorus by the bands of workmen and workwomen 
on the banks of the Nile : " They starve us, they 
starve us ; they beat us, they beat us : but there 's 
some one above, there 's some one above, who will 
punish them well, who will punish them well."^ 
Nevertheless, despite ill usage, the Israelites multi- 
plied rapidly. It seems to be the tendency of 
slavery to increase the number of the enslaved 
and to reduce the number of masters. To pre- 
vent the possibility of an insurrection, an edict 
was issued to slay all the male children. One 
Hebrew mother, with an audacious ingenuity which 
could find lodgment only in a mother's heart, re- 
solved to save her baby boy from the tiger by 
putting him into the tiger's den. She put the 

the Pentateuch, chiefly the Book of Exodus, and Josephns's An- 
tiquities of the Jews, books ii., iii., and iv. S. Baring--Goiild, 
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, chap, xxxii., has brought 
together various legends from other sources concerning Moses. 
The Koran should also be consulted for Mohammedan legends 
(see Selections from the Kur-dn, by Edward W. Lane, pp. 97-131, 
Moses and his People). Also compare Stephen's speech (Acts 
chap, vii.) with the Exodus narrative. 

^ Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, Arthur Penrhyn 
Stanley, D. D., Part L, p. 93. 



94 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

cliild in a basket made of the papyrus whicli grows 
in great quantities by the banks of the Nile. Per- 
haps she shared the Egyptian fancy that this 
papyrus was a protection against the river demon 
embodied in the crocodile. She then left him at 
the water's edge, where the princess came to bathe, 
and set her daughter to watch what should become 
of the little waif. She could neither bear to wit- 
ness his death nor endure the suspense of absolute 
ignorance of his fate. Her scheme succeeded ; the 
cry of the babe appealed to the woman's heart of 
the princess ; she called to a Hebrew maid who 
seemed to be accidentally standing not far away ; 
and the sister took the babe back to his own mother 
to be nursed until he should be old enough to be 
weaned. Then he was transferred to the palace to 
be educated by Egyptian priests as the adopted 
son of his foster-mother. The Child of the Waters 
became an Egyptian prince. Jewish legends report 
him as so extraordinarily beautiful that laborers 
stopped from their toil to refresh themselves with 
a glance at his bright face ; . and as possessed of a 
mind as remarkable as his body. Egypt was the 
land of civilization, of art, of science, and of philo- 
sophy ; and the young prince, who, by virtue of his 
adoption into the royal family, was also a priest, 
became versed in the arts, the sciences, and the 
theology of the Egyptian cultivated class. The 
ancient legends respecting him declare that he not 
only acquainted himself with the civilization of his 
age, but added to it. He is said to have learned 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 95 

arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, medicine, and 
music ; to have invented boats and engines for 
building; instruments of war and of hydraulics, 
hieroglyphics, and division of lands — that is, sur- 
veying. His military achievements outshone in 
popular estimation his intellectual attainments. 
He conducted with great success a campaign 
against the Ethiopians, and returned in triumph, 
probably the most popular man in the kingdom 
despite his plebeian origin ; but also probably the 
most envied. But he never forgot that he was a 
Hebrew ; perhaps with the Hebrew blood he re- 
tained something of that contempt for other races 
which has been at once the strength and the weak- 
ness of the Hebrew race. Nor did he forget the 
Hebrew religion. It is said that he worshiped 
outside the temple walls an unknown God ; perhaps 
he identified the God of his Hebrew mother with 
the incommunicable deity whom the esoteric theo- 
logy of the Egyptian priesthood taught him to 
believe was back of and manifested through the 
cloud of mediatorial deities whom the common 
people ignorantly worshiped. Says Rawlinson in 
his " History of Egypt : " — 

" The primary doctrine of the esoteric religion un- 
doubtedly was the real essential Unity of the Divine 
Nature. The sacred texts taught that there was a single 
Being, the ' sole producer of all things, both in heaven 
and earth, Himself not produced of any,' . . . ' the only 
true living God, self-originated,' ... * who exists from 
the beginning,' . . . ' who has made all things, but has 



96 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

not Himself been made.' This Being seems never to 
have been represented by any material, even symbolical, 
form. It is thought that He had no name, or, if He 
had, that it must have been unlawful either to pro- 
nounce or write it. He was a pure spirit, perfect in 
every respect — all-wise, almighty, supremely good. The 
gods of the popular mythology were understood, in the 
esoteric religion, to be either personified attributes of 
the Deity, or parts of the nature which He had created, 
considered as improved and inspired by Him." ^ 

It is not improbable that this doctrine, which the 
Egyptian priests held as an abstraction, Moses 
infused with a life of real devotion, borrowed from 
his mother, and so made it concrete and vital. 
Strabo cannot be said to be a historical authority 
respecting Moses, except as he indicates correctly 
the popular impression of a later epoch ; but these 
impressions are not incredible ; their reality would 
go far to account for subsequent events in the 
career and influence of this extraordinary man ; 
and according to Strabo, " He [Moses] taught that 
the Egyptian was not right in likening the nature 
of God to beasts and cattle, nor yet the Africans, 
nor even the Greeks in fashioning their gods in 
the form of man. He taught that this only was 
God — that which encompasses all of us, earth 
and sea ; that which we call Heaven, and the 

^ History of Ancient Egypt, by Georg-e Rawlinson, M. A., vol. i. 
p. 324. The whole chapter (No. 10), on the Religion of Ancient 
Egypt, is worth consultation by the student of the life and work 
of Moses. 



TEE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 97 

Order of the world, and the Nature of things." 
This was quite in accord with the esoteric doctrine 
of the Egyptian priesthood. But no one so angers 
a priesthood as he who reveals the mysteries of 
their faith to the common herd ; no one seems to 
them more dangerous than he who at once spiritu- 
alizes and popularizes truth which they have re- 
garded purely as a philosophy and therefore as 
their peculiar possession. Such a one uses their 
own professed beliefs with which to destroy their 
professional power. He is condemned as a rene- 
gade from their order, a betrayer of their secrets, 
and an enemy of their religion. More than once 
Moses narrowly escaped assassination. Nothing but 
the intervention of Thermutis, his foster-mother, 
prevented him from falling a prey to the anger of 
the king, who, if modern scholars are right in 
identifying him with Eameses II., was not a mon- 
arch to brook independence in another or to con- 
trol the passion of envy in himself. 

Such is the story of Moses's life as we gather it 
from the uncertain traditions of the past. Such, in 
shadowy and uncertain outline, was the training 
of the man whose passionate burst of indignation 
against an incident of Egyptian oppression com- 
pelled him to flee the court and the kingdom ; whose 
years of exile in the wilderness trained in him the 
needed spirit of patience, gave him opportunity for 
reflection on the truths which he had learned as a 
philosophy and by devout meditation was to con- 
vert into religion, and familiarized him with the 



98 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

wilderness into wMch lie was to lead tlie people 
whom lie was to convert into a nation by giving to 
them the fundamental principles of their civil and 
their religious life. How he led them out of their 
bondage into that wilderness it is not necessary 
here to relate. The story is familiar to every 
reader of the Bible : it is enough to intimate very 
briefly the cumulative reasons which led me to 
accept that story of the Exodus as in its essential 
character trustworthy history. 

In the first place, this story of the Exodus is 
written into the songs and stories of the Hebrew 
people; it is interwoven throughout their litera- 
ture.i In this respect it is in striking contrast 
with the story of the Eall, which, after it is once 
recorded in the third chapter of Genesis, is never 
again referred to by any of the Old Testament 
writers, and among the writers of the New Testa- 
ment only by Paul, and by him only incidentally. 

But it is not only in their literature that this 
exodus of Israel from Egypt was celebrated ; it 
was celebrated by their greatest national festival, 
the Passover. And this Passover was of such a 
character as to indicate a true memory of certain 
details of that great event ; and it was so widely 
and continuously observed as to make incredible 
the opinion that it celebrated nothing.^ As the 

1 For references to Moses see 1 Chron. xxL 29 ; xxii. 13 ; xxiii. 
14, 15 ; 2 Cliron. xxiv. 6, 9 ; xxxiv. 14 ; Ps. ciii. 7 ; cv. 26 ; cvi. ; 
Is. Ixiii. 11, 12. For reference to the Exodus and the wanderings 
in the wilderness, see Pss. cv., cvi., exxxv., cxxxvi. ; Neh. ix. 9-2-3. 

2 Comp. Exod. ch. xii. ; Num. ix. 5 ; Josh. v. 10, 11 ; 2 Kings 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 99 

existence of the American Fourtli of July is itself 
an indication of a definite day when the independ- 
ence of the nation was declared, so the Passover is 
an indication not to be ignored that the birth of 
the nation was characterized by some such event 
as its history narrates and its poets celebrate. 

There are also silent witnesses outside either the 
national literature or the national life to the sub- 
stantial truth of the story of the Exodus. The 
Egyptian monuments contain many pictorial repre- 
sentations which serve to illustrate the Old Testa- 
ment account of the Exodus. They are not demon- 
strations of its accuracy, but they are at least 
indications that it is not inaccurate. It is not 
within the province of this article to attempt to 
reproduce in any detail the arguments from the 
monuments ; it must suffice to say that I believe 
there never has been found in Egypt any figure, 
symbol, picture, or monument which tends to 
throw doubt upon the narrative in the Book of 
Exodus, or to indicate that the story, even in its 
minutest details, is inaccurate, while there are 
many indications of the accuracy of the incidental 
allusions to Egyptian sites or Egyptian customs 
which the narrative contains.^ 

xxiii. 21-23 ; 2 Chron. xxx. 1 ; xxxv. 1-19 ; Ezra vi. 19, 20 ; Matt. 
xxvi. 17, 19. A comparison of these references will show that the 
feast of the Passover was kept apparently continuously from its 
first appointment down to Christ. That there should be such a 
continuous celebration, if there was no event to celebrate, is 
hardly credible. 

1 Any illustrative work on Egypt, such as The History of 

LefC. 



100 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

The confirmation lent to that narrative by geo- 
graphical exploration is not less noteworthy. Geo- 
graphical explorers have followed the line of the 
great pilgrimage ; they have been able to see 
where the nation could have crossed an arm of the 
Eed Sea in the manner described in the Biblical 
narrative ; where a passage might easily have been 
made for the people by an ebb tide and a strong 

Ancient Egypt, by Dr. Rawlinson, or The Ancient Egyptians, by Sir 
J. Gardner WUkinsoB, D. C. L., F. E,. S., etc., contains illustra- 
tions of Egyptian civilization -which serve to thro-w light on inci- 
dental references in the Biblical history. For a general study of 
such elucidations, and the confirmation given to Bible history by 
the ancient monuments, see Eecent Research in Bible Lands, Her- 
man V. Hilpreeht, Ph. D., D. D. ; The Bible and Modern Discoveries, 
by Henry A. Harper of the Palestine Exploration Fund; and 
History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, by J. F. McCurdy, Ph. D., 
LL. D., Professor of Oriental Languages in the University Col- 
lege, Toronto. A single paragraph from IVIr. Harper's book may 
serve to indicate the nature, though not the extent, of the con- 
firmation lent to the Hebrew history of the Exodus by modem 
investigations in Egypt. " Before we leave these springs let us 
suno. up what the recent Biblical gains have been. The true 
starting-point of the Exodus, with the city of Pithom, has been 
found. Then, also, that the Hebrew words translated in the Au- 
thorized Version do not mean 'Red Sea' but 'Sea of Reeds.' 
Also we have found that ' the tongue of the Egyptian Sea ' at the 
time of the Exodus extended to the present Lake Timsah ; that 
owing to the elevation of the ground that ' sea ' ' dried up,' and 
left lakes of brackish water, through which the present Suez Canal 
runs ; that the Israelites crossed ' the Sea of Reeds ' somewhere 
near Lake Timsah, and then went ' three days ' journey in the 
wilderness of Etham, and pitched in Marah ' (Num. xxxiii. 8). 
They had come to Marah, and find the ' waters of Marah ' bitter. 
We have seen that these ' Musa ' springs are ' bitter,' that they 
have a deposit of bog iron ore in some, and others are ' brackish.' " 
P. 89. 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 101' 

wind ; and where quicksands exist which inter- 
pret the disaster which overwhelmed the pursuing 
Egyptians. In a similar manner, almost every 
step of the journey from Egypt to Mount Sinai 
has been identified ; and a great plain which 
would well serve for the encampment of Israel 
at the foot of Mount Sinai is there to indicate 
at least the probability of such an encampment.^ 
It is true that a historical novelist can describe 
with geographical accuracy any scene through 
which his hero is supposed to pass ; but, in fact, 
the novelist is rarely accurate, and imaginative his- 
tory, lacking the deliberate purpose of the profes- 
sional romancer, generally lacks even the vrai- 
semhlance which the romancer is able to impart to 
his narratives. Similar considerations to those 
which Professor Schliemann's explorations have 
furnished in support of a historical basis for the 
Iliad constitute a much stronger argument for 
the substantial historicity of the story of the Exodus 
and the encampment in the wilderness. 

It may, then, be assumed that Moses was one 
of the people of Israel ; that in his education he 

^ For illustration of this geographical confirmation of the He- 
brew history of the Exodus and the march to Sinai and thence 
to the Promised Land, see The Desert of the Exodus, by E. H. 
Palmer, M. A., especially chap. xxv. He thus (at p. 434) sums up 
his conclusions : " We cannot, perhaps, ever hope to identify all 
the stations and localities mentioned in the Bible account of the 
Exodus, but enough has been recovered to enable us to trace the 
more important lines of march, and to follow the Israelites in 
their several journeys from Egypt to Sinai, from Sinai to Kadesh, 
and from thence to the Promised Land." 



102 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

received all that the most civilized state of his time 
could give him ; that, by birth, by education, and 
by nature, he had the qualities of a prophet and a 
statesman ; and that, being so equipped, he led the 
people of Israel out of Egypt to the great plain at 
the foot of Mount Sinai, where he gave them their 
constitution. That constitution is contained in 
what is admitted by all critics — the conservative 
and progressive, traditional and modern — to be 
the oldest complete book in the Bible.^ It con- 
sists of the twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-second, 
twenty-third chapters of Exodus, and, I think, of 
the first eight verses also of the twenty-fourth. It 
is probable also that, if the nineteenth chapter is 
not a part of the Book of the Covenant, it embodies 
essential principles which belong to the same age.^ 

^ Not the oldest writing', — the Song of Deborah, for example, 
is probably older, — but the oldest book in the Bible. It is 
known as the Book of the Covenant. 

^ It is true that some critics attribute the book, not only in its 
present form but in its essential contents, to an age much later 
than that of Moses. WeUhausen argues against the Mosaic au- 
thorship of the Decalogue. History of Israel, Julius WeUhausen, 
p. 439. Dr. Budde thus states the argument from the evolution- 
ist's point of view : " Many scholars, while relinquishing every- 
thing else, have tried to save the Ten Commandments, the 
' Mosaic ' moral law, for these oldest times. Now the Ten Com- 
mandments base all their demands on the nature of the God of 
Israel. If, then, they really did come from this period, it appears 
that there existed, even in the earliest times, a conception of God 
so sublime that hardly anji:hing coxdd have remained for the 
prophets to do. This of itself should suffice to show the impossi- 
bility of the Mosaic origin of the Ten Commandments." Meligion 
of Israel to the Exile, Karl Budde, D. D., p. 32. This argument 
ignores the existence of geniuses in human history who anticipate 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 103 

At this point let the reader lay down this volume 
and read through this Book of the Covenant ; it 

their fellows and proclaim truths to which the race only gradu- 
ally arrives. Prof. WiUiam James has well said that " the evo- 
lutionary view of history, when it denies the vital importance of 
individual initiative, is, then, an utterly vague and unscientific 
conception, a lapse from modern scientific determinism into the 
most ancient oriental fatalism." The Will to Believe, p. 245. 
That Moses was a spiritual genius, with such power of individual 
initiative, all Hebrew history combines to testify, and most schol- 
ars concur in believing its testimony. So even Wellhausen : " The 
time of Moses is invariably regarded as the properly creative 
period in Israel's history. . . . The prophets who came after 
gave, it is true, greater distinctness to the peculiar character of 
the Nation ; but they did not make it, on the contrary, it made 
them." History of Israel, Julius Wellhausen, p. 432. This does 
not seem to me to consist with his apparent theory that the Ten 
Commandments have a late prophetic origin; because the Ten 
Commandments are unmistakably the real moral makiag of the 
Nation, if not as a formal code certainly as a system of moral 
principles. A correspondent writing to me objects to the state- 
ment that the Book of the Covenant is the oldest book in the 
Bible. How can it be, he asks, " as old even as Deuteronomy, 
when the latter (chapter v.) knows no more powerful sanction for 
the observance of the Sabbath than the memory of the unresting 
slavery in Egypt ? Surely, if, with the writer of the Book of the 
Covenant, the Deuteronomist had known any story of creation- 
rest, he could not have failed to adduce that far more tremen- 
dous sanction." This argument assumes that the Ten Command- 
ments existed originally in the form in which they are contained 
in the Book of the Covenant. As stated in the text, I believe that 
the explanatory matter was added in both editions of the Ten 
Commandments (Exod. xx. 1-17 ; Deut. v. 6-21) at a later date ; 
it is only the essential principles in the form given below which 
were probably Mosaic. The Mosaic authorship of the Book of 
the Covenant, not in its literary form but in its essential prin- 
ciples, and especially of the Ten Commandments, is maintained 
and emphasized by Ewald : " There is no well-founded doubt 
that the Ten Commandments are derived from Moses, in their 



104 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

will not take him long. Let him then endeavor 
to imagine the mental and moral condition of the 
people to whom its instructions were imparted. 
They had just emerged from a slavery which had 
stifled any independent moral or intellectual devel- 
opment ; in which they had been subject to a peo- 
ple whom Herodotus describes as " religious to ex- 
cess, far beyond any other race of men " ; -^ a people 
who made an elaborate sacrificial system a means 

g-eneral import, their present order, and even in their peculiar 
language. They are g-enninely Mosaic in essence, and comprise 
the highest tmths which the new religion brought into the world, 
in so far as they may he summed up in a few short sentences for 
everybody, and are expressed with so much precision and order 
as of itself to indicate a superior mind. Their arrangement pos- 
sesses the most antique simplicity imaginable, and has itself be- 
come the model of many similar series of laws, in groups of five 
and ten. They are moreover twice (Exod. xx. and Deut. v.) 
placed at the head of all expositions of the Mosaic religion ; and 
in both cases distinctly marked as most sacred and peculiar 
words. And whereas there are several peculiar expressions, even 
in the ten very brief sentences of which they undoubtedly origi- 
nally consisted, both the copies now extant insert several addi- 
tions and explanations — an infallible criterion of a very ancient 
text variously interpreted in after-times — a text in this respect 
■without a paraUel in the Did Testament." History of Israel, Hein- 
rich Ewald, vol. ii. p. 19. This view of the date of the Ten Com- 
mandments is entertained by the majority of the modem scholars 
of the evangelical liberal school: by "W. Eobertson Smith, The 
Old Testament in the Jewish Church, pp. 335-338 ; by Charles A. 
Brigg-s. The Study of Holy Scripture, p. 118 ; by A. B. Bruce, 
Apologetics, chap. iv. pp. 208-21.5 ; by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, 
Lectures on the History of the JevAsh Church, lect. vii. pp. 194-198 ; 
and apparently by S. R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of 
the Old Testament, pp. 31-35. 

1 Herodotus, quoted in Eawlinson's History of Egypt, i. 320. 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 105 

at once of glorifying the gods and of supporting 
and enriching the priests ; a people who knew no- 
thing of the esoteric doctrine of monotheism, the 
knowledge of which was sedulously guarded from 
the uninitiated ; who worshiped innumerable in- 
carnations and manifestations of the deity, from 
the sun to the sacred beetle ; whose fear of future 
hell and hopes of future heaven gave to the priest- 
hood a power which they were not slow to use ; 
whose moral life indicates that the ethical precepts 
of their sacred books were not much better known 
than the spiritual monotheism of their specially illu- 
minated philosophers ; and who were dominated 
by a priesthood which controlled literature, educa- 
tion, science, and politics in the interest of their 
own ecclesiastical order, and were the master spir- 
its in every event of life, public and private.^ 

The simplicity of the religious and ethical ideas 
contained in the Book of the Covenant is the 
more striking when contrasted with the ideals and 
practices of the country in which Israel had so long 
dwelt. The book is as remarkable for what it 
omits as for what it contains. It is practically 
silent respecting any future life, any sacrificial sys- 
tem, any ecclesiastical ritual, any organized priest- 
hood, any form of what was then universally and 
is even now generally termed religious duty. It is 
purely spiritual in its conception of God and of 
his worship, and wholly non-ritualistic and almost 

^ See Rawlinson's History of Egypt^ i. chap. x. ; compare chap. 
iiL 



106 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

exclusively ethical in its interpretation of the divine 
will. Its fundamental principles are incorporated 
in ten commandments, which in their original form 
probably read substantially as follows ; ^ — 

I am Jehovah thy God which brought thee out of the 
land of Egypt, the house of servants. 

Thou shalt have no other gods. 

Thou shalt not make any graven image. 

Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in 
vain. 

Kemember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.*^ 

Honor thy father and thy mother. 

Thou shalt not kill. 

Thou shalt not steal. 

Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

Thou shalt not bear false witaess against thy neigh- 
bor. 

Thou shalt not covet. 

The rest of the Book of the Covenant is little 
more than an illustration and an application of 
these principles to specific conditions in society, or 
a modification or amelioration of some of those 
conditions, such as slavery, in accordance with the 
spirit of these principles. Some of these applica- 
tions clearly belong to a later date, since they would 

1 This is the view of most modern scholars, such as Ewald, 
Driyer, Briggs, Stanley, Bruce, and others. For the groimds on 
which this opinion is based the reader is referred to these authors 
as cited in the preceding notes. 

2 That is, set apart. The subsequent additions undoubtedly 
truly interpret its purpose — to secure rest to a people who as 
slaves had lived in perpetual servile drudgery. 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 107 

be wholly inapplicable to the migratory condition 
of Israel while dwelling in tents in the wilderness.^ 
But the fundamental principles of this Hebraic 
constitution are as radical as they are simple, and 
are equally applicable to all epochs and all peoples. 
Leaving their theological and ecclesiastical aspects 
to be considered in the following article, I propose 
in this article to state the political aspects of these 
principles, and to show how the political life of the 
nation was grounded in and developed out of them. 

The fundamental principle of this constitution 
is that religion is the basis of the state and the 
ground of authority for law ; that, in other words, 
all just law is divine in its origin, nature, and sanc- 
tions. 

There are two contrasted conceptions respecting 
the basis of the state and the ground of authority 
for law which have claimed the suffrages of man- 
kind. The first is the doctrine that authority rests 
upon power. Law, according to this opinion, is a 
command or series of commands, given by one man 
or body of men, to another man or body of men. 
It is law because the person or persons issuing it 
have power to punish the person or persons to 
whom it is issued, for disobedience. Of this con- 
ception of law John Austin may be regarded as 
the chief historical exponent. " A command," he 
says, " is an order issued by a superior to an infe- 
rior. It is a signification of desire distinguished 

1 E. g., chap, xxii., 5, 6, 7. There were no vineyards, no 
standing corn, and no houses in the wilderness. 



108 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

by tliis peculiarity, — tliat the party to whom it is 
directed is liable to evil from the other, in case he 
comply not with the desire. . . . The evil is called 
a sanction^ and the command, or duty, is said to 
be sanctioned by the chance of incurring the evil. 
. . . All commands, however, are not laws. That 
term is reserved for those commands which oblige 
generally to the performance of acts of a class." 
These principles lead to and are incorporated in 
the following definitions : " (1) Laws, being com- 
mands, emanate from a determinate source; (2) 
Every sanction is an evil annexed to a command ; 
(3) Every duty implies a command, and chiefly 
means obnoxiousness to the evils annexed to com- 
mands." ^ This is in effect a philosophical state- 
ment of the doctrine popularly embodied in the 
maxim, " Might makes right." The right of the 
superior to command depends upon his power to 
enforce his commands. Notwithstanding the high 
authority for it, it is none other than the philoso- 
phy which underlies all despotism. 

In striking contrast to this is the philosophy 
implied in the parenthetic statement in the Decla- 
ration of Independence that "government rests 
upon the consent of the governed." Of the philo- 
sophy embodied in this maxim Eousseau is the ablest 
modern exponent. He taught that man was origi- 
nally in a state of nature, which was a state of 
absolute freedom ; that in this freedom men were 

1 Encydopcedia Britannica, article Law. See also Maine on 
Ancient Law, pp. 6, 7. 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 109 

brought into continual conflict of interests and 
consequent disadvantages; tliat they, therefore, 
consented to surrender some of this freedom for 
the advantages which an orderly government would 
bring with it, and that this imaginary agreement, 
or " social contract," was the basis of all just gov- 
ernment.i 

If the first theory is that which underlies despot- 
ism, the second is that which underlies anarchy .^ 
Upon the theory of the " social contract " there is 
really no such thing as authority. Law is simply 
a form of consent, or at least derives all its author- 

^ For a good critical account of Roiisseau's doctrine of the So- 
cial Contract, see Rousseau, by John Morley, vol. ii. chap. iii. See 
also, for a briefer description of it by more hostile critics, A Cen- 
tury of Mevolutioriy by William S. Lilly, chap, i., and Popular 
Government, by Sir Henry S. Maine, pp. 154-162. 

2 And anarchy is only another form of despotism ; the despot- 
ism of the many in lieu of that of the one or of the few. See this 
abundantly illustrated in Taine's French Revolution, book i. To 
this effect De Tocqueville bears eloquent testimony : *' If the abso- 
lute power of a majority were to be substituted, by democratic 
nations, for all the different powers which checked or retarded 
overmuch the energy of individual minds, the evil would only have 
changed character. Men would not have found the means of in- 
dependent life ; they would simply have discovered (no easy task) 
a new physiognomy of servitude. There is, — and I cannot repeat 
it too often, — there is here matter for profound reflection to those 
who look on freedom of thought as a holy thing, and who hate 
not only the despot, but despotism. For myself, when I feel the 
hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care but little to know 
who oppresses me ; and I am not the more disposed to pass 
beneath the yoke because it is held out to me by the arms of a 
million of men." Democracy in America, Alexis De TocqueviUe, 
pp. 12, 13. 



110 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

itj from a consent, real or implied. The maxim 
tliat " government rests on the consent of the gov- 
erned " still continues popular ; but the philosophy 
of which it is an expression has long since been 
abandoned by all historical and philosophical stu- 
dents. There never was such a state of nature as 
Eousseau imagines ; there never was such a social 
contract as he has conceived. The earlier stages 
of life are not those of liberty, but those of abso- 
lutism. As Rousseau's theory has no basis in his- 
tory, so it has none in analogy. The government 
of the father does not depend on the consent of 
the children, nor that of the teacher on the con- 
sent of the pupil, nor that of God on the consent of 
men. No more does the government of the state 
depend on the consent of the citizens. For America 
the notion that government rests on the consent of 
the governed was forever demolished by the Civil 
War. 

The basic principle of the Hebrew government 
was neither the authority of one man over other 
men because he has power to enforce his com- 
mands, nor the consent of other men to accept the 
will of one man — that is, the consent of the 
governed ; it was the authority of Almighty God. 
There are certain great natural laws — of heat, of 
light, of electricity, of gravitation. Men neither 
make them nor unmake them, mend them nor 
modify them. They must obey them, and then they 
can use them ; but they violate them at their peril. 
So there are laws of health which men neither 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 111 

make nor unmake, mend nor modify. If we obey 
them, we have health ; if we disobey them, we 
sicken and die. The fundamental principle of the 
Hebraic commonwealth was that there are great 
moral laws by which human society is bound 
together. These laws men neither make nor un- 
make, mend nor modify. They are not dependent 
upon the will of monarch, oligarchy, aristocracy, 
or public assembly. They are eternal, absolute, 
immutable. We must find out what they are and 
obey them, or suffer the penalty of our ignorance 
or our willfulness. "The seat of law," says 
Hooker, " is in the bosom of Almighty God." 
This is the doctrine of the Hebraic common- 
wealth. Neither Czar nor Council of Ten nor Brit- 
ish Parliament nor American Congress can make 
law. All that man can do, whatever governmental 
mechanism he adopts, is to ascertain what are the 
laws of social order, and apply them to the pro- 
blems of his own time and his own community. 
This is the first and fundamental principle of the 
Hebraic commonwealth; the authority for law is 
neither the power of one man to enforce his will 
over other men nor the consent of the governed ; 
it is the authority of the one and only Lawgiver. 
If by our governmental organization we ascertain 
what the law of the social order is, we shall do 
well ; if we fail to ascertain, or, ascertaining, fail 
to obey, we shall do iU. 

The second principle or congeries of principles 
in the Hebraic constitution is found in its state- 



112 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

ment of the essential laws of the social order. 
These are very simple and very vital. They were 
stated in the Ten Commandments in concrete 
forms, but they are concrete forms of great prin- 
ciples which may be restated somewhat thus : 
Spiritual reverence for God ; preservation of some 
time free from the drudgery of toil for the develop- 
ment of the higher nature ; respect for parents ; 
regard for the rights of person, of the family, of 
property, of reputation ; and, last, this respect real 
and spontaneous, not formal and enforced. 

When a community bases government on either 
the power of the governor, leading to despotism, or 
on the consent of the governed, leading to anarchy, 
it violates the first of these laws. When it sub- 
stitutes symbols for realities, promotes and en- 
courages the spirit of irreverence, devotes all its 
energies to material advancement, forgetting all 
need of and all ministry to the higher life, and 
makes every day a workday, and wealth the mea- 
sure of prosperity, it violates the second, third, 
and fourth laws. When, through the disregard of 
parents, it suffers the disintegration of the family, 
which is itself the unit of organized society, and so 
prepares the way for widespread social disorder, it 
violates the fifth law. When it fails to afford 
protection of the innocent from the oppressions of 
the strong or the violence of mobs, or suffers such 
industrial conditions as destroy men and women 
and children before their time in mining and man- 
ufacturing industries, it violates the sixth law. 



THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT 113 

When it permits the practice of polygamy, or en- 
courages licentiousness in legalized forms by free- 
dom of divorce, it violates the seventh law. When 
it taxes a helpless and prostrate people under 
forms of law, giving them by law none of the 
benefits for which governments are organized, it 
violates the eighth law. When it allows honored 
citizens whose life has been devoted to the public 
service of the community to be slandered by a 
sensational and unprincipled press, and continues, 
to give the press its support, it violates the ninth 
law. When it depends wholly or chiefly on force 
to maintain these laws, failing to furnish such 
education as will make obedience to them voluntary 
and spontaneous, it violates the tenth law. These 
are the fundamental laws of human life. Their 
maintenance is essential to social order. No so- 
called laws are just which do not work in harmony 
with them. 

These ethical and spiritual laws, as simple as 
they are fundamental, are easily apprehended by 
mankind. Their sanction is in the universal con- 
science. This is the third principle of the Mosaic 
constitution. The force of these laws does not lie 
primarily in the power of the human governor to 
enforce it ; nor does it lie in the consent of the 
governed; it lies in the inherent authority of 
divine law and in the sanction given to that law by 
human conscience. This principle is recognized 
in the history of the giving of the Ten Command- 
ments. Moses, it is said, came down from Mount 



114 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Sinai, submitted to the people the question whether 
they would accept Jehovah as their king and his 
will as their law, and "all the people answered 
together and said. All that Jehovah hath spoken 
we will do." This acceptance by the people of 
the divine constitution gives to the Book of the 
Covenant, which contains the Ten Commandments, 
its name ; gives, indeed, to the collection of books 
in which that Book of the Covenant is found the 
ancient title, the "Old Testament," or "Old 
Covenant." Throughout their history the relation 
between God and Israel was treated as a covenant 
relation. The prophetic indictments of Israel 
were not merely because they had violated the 
divine law, but because they had broken their 
covenant with their God. The law was not im- 
posed upon them ; it was accepted by them ; its 
authority was divine, and they had recognized 
their obligations to obey it. This fact is written 
large in Hebrew history. There are no threats of 
punishment in a future life ; there are no promises 
of rewards in a future life ; no priesthood is vested 
with power to enforce the law by appeals to super- 
stitious fears, as the law was enforced in the Middle 
Ages. Nor was there permitted to Israel in its 
governmental ideals a standing army to enforce 
against a recalcitrant people the laws which they 
had made their own by their acceptance of them. 
*' Out of Zion shall come forth the law," said one 
of Israel's great prophets. That is, the obligar 
tion of law was a religious obligation recognized 



THE BOOK OF TEE COVENANT 115 

by the conscience of the people to whom it was 
given. 

These three principles, then, were at the foun- 
dation of the Hebraic commonwealth : first, that 
reverence for God and acceptance of his authority 
is the basis of a free state ; second, that the gen- 
eral laws of the social order are very simple, 
though their applications may be diverse and com- 
plicated; third, that for a peaceful and a free 
people acceptance of these laws is necessary, and 
in a free commonwealth they must depend pri- 
marily for their support on the conscience of the 
people themselves. On these principles as a foun- 
dation was built the Hebraic commonwealth ; his- 
tory has proved them to be the foundation of all 
truly free governments. How they were applied 
in the Hebrew commonwealth will be the subject 
for consideration in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER V 

THE DEUTEEONOMIC CODE 

It is clear from the subsequent history of the 
Hebrews that only the foundations of the national 
structure were laid during the lifetime of Moses. 
The superstructure was not instantly reared thereon, 
but was the product of centuries of national growth. 
It does not come within the province of this volume 
to trace in detail the national history of Israel. 
The general outlines of that history are familiar to 
every reader of the English Bible. For three cen- 
turies the tribes existed in scattered and separate 
communities, without a constitution, an organized 
government, or effective law. Leaders arose from 
time to time called "judges," though their func- 
tion was executive rather than judicial, and military 
rather than executive. These leaders were not 
elected by the people, nor did they inherit their 
office. They assumed authority by reason of some 
force or vigor of character which made them effi- 
cient in protecting the people against foreign foes, 
or made them the subjects of popular admiration 
by reason of special feats of valor.^ Much of the 

^ " Their authority was divine, or, as we should say, moral, in its 
character ; it rested upon that spontaneous recognition of the idea 



THE DEUTERONOMIC CODE 117 

time the tribes were subject to predatory raids by- 
surrounding nations ; part of the time they were 
in absolute subjection to cruel and unscrupulous 
foes. Within the tribes themselves there was prac- 
tically no law. " Every man did what was right 
in his own eyes." At length, under one of these 
leaders — Saul — the tribes were united in a vigor- 
ous and successful campaign ; under his successor, 
David, they were organized into a united kingdom ; 
and this kingdom, under his son Solomon, grew in 
size, in wealth, and in apparent prosperity. But 
the spirit of liberty in a people whose blood and 
whose essential principles united to make them 
jealous of their freedom, the spirit of restlessness 
which was inherited from their colonial days, and 
the grievous exactions levied upon them by a king 
who lived in almost Oriental splendor, induced re- 
bellion after his death. In the reign of his suc- 
cessor ten of the twelve tribes seceded ; the nation 
was rent in twain ; a new capital was established ; 
an idolatrous worship imitating that of Egypt was 
set up in Samaria for the seceding tribes ; and the 
history of the Jews flows thereafter in a divided 
stream as that of Israel and Judah. After two 
hundred years of increasing profligacy, Israel, or 
more accurately a large proportion of its popula- 
tion, was carried away captive by the Assyrians, 
and their country was repopulated by a colony from 
the land of their captors. A mongrel population 

of rig^ht whicli, though unexpressed, was alive and working among 
the tribes." The History of Israel, by Julius Wellhausen, p. 436. 



118 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

supplanted the tribes of Hebrew origin, a hybrid 
religion the worship of Jehovah.^ The two re- 
maining tribes, retaining the capital and the temple, 
preserved their nationality under the name of 
Judah, but, changing their religion with the chan- 
ging opinions of their rulers, outrivaled their sister 
Israel in corruption.^ This corruption reached its 
climax under Manasseh, the fourteenth king of the 
southern kingdom. His reign of over half a cen- 
tury was characterized not only by the establish- 
ment of paganism as the religion of the state, but 
by a consequent reign of licentiousness and immo- 
rality impossible to describe and almost impossible 
to imagine. The worship of the heavenly bodies 
was restored ; the name of Moloch became a com- 
mon oath ; human sacrifice was reinstated ; there 
was a succession of small furnaces in the streets for 
which the children gathered wood and in which 
their parents baked cakes as offerings to Astarte ; 
the roofs of the houses were converted into places 
of worship and of incense-burning to the heathen 
gods ; the temple vessels were consecrated to Baal ; 
the altar in front of the temple was desecrated ; 
and the ark itself was removed from the Holy of 
Holies. An attempt made by faithful prophets 
to stem this current of heathenism was met by a 
wholesale religious persecution of all the followers 
of Jehovah, and by a reign of terror against all 
who dared remain faithful to the religion of their 

1 2 Kings xvii. 

2 Jer. iii. 11. 



THE DEUTERONOMIC CODE 119 

fathers.^ During this half-century the religious 
writings as well as the religious principles of the 
Jewish nation were forgotten. Such ecclesiastical 
literature as had grown up during the preceding 
centuries was kept within the priestly circles. The 
people knew even less about ecclesiasticism then 
than they do to-day. 

Then it was that an unknown prophet arose, 
resolved to do what he could to bring Israel back 
to the simple religion of Moses. Inspired by the 
teaching of preceding prophets of his own nation, 
such as Isaiah and Micah, and perhaps also by 
echoes of the prophecies from the northern king- 
dom of such men as Elijah, Amos, and Hosea, the 
unknown gathered together whatever there was of 
ancient law in manuscript and of ancient counsel 
in current traditions, and rewrote the laws of 
Moses, codifying both manuscript and tradition, 
modifying both and adding to them new regula- 
tions in the spirit of the old, and new applications 
of the old to the conditions and problems of his 
own time. The discovery of his writing would 
have insured the death of the author and the de- 
struction of the manuscript. The temple was still 
a literary centre, and somewhere in its archives 
the prophet hid the book. Here, after Manasseh's 
death, the manuscript was discovered, brought 
to the new and reforming king, Josiah, accepted 
by him as a divinely inspired interpretation of 

1 2 Kings xxi. 1-16 ; xxiii. 4 ; xxiv. 4 ; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 1-10 ; 
Isa. Ixy. 3 ; Jer. vii. 17, 18, 31 ; viii. 2 ; xiv. 13 ; Zeph. i. 5. 



120 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Mosaism, and made the inspiration and guide of 
what was both a great religious revival and a great 
political reformation. To this codification, by an 
unknown prophet of the seventh century, of Mosaic 
precepts and principles, additions were made sub- 
sequently by other writers. The whole constitutes 
the Book of Deuteronomy. How much of it is 
truly Mosaic, how much of it was contributed by 
the unknown author in the reign of Manasseh, how 
much is of even subsequent date, it is not possible 
now to determine with absolute accuracy, nor is it 
necessary. The value of the Book of Deuteron- 
omy does not depend upon its Mosaic authorship. 
Its value depends upon the fact that it is the ex- 
pression of the faithful few in a degenerate age to 
the fundamental principles of the founder of their 
church and their nation. 

I must refer the reader to other books for the 
reasons which have led scholars to the conclusion 
respecting the nature of the Book of Deuteronomy 
here so briefly stated.^ Those reasons lie partly in 
the structure of the book itself. It consists in form 
of at least three distinct speeches, together with 
two poems, all of them put into the mouth of 
Moses. We must either suppose that Moses wrote 
these orations, or that they were taken down ver- 

^ The reader who desires a more thorough discussion of the 
character, contents, date, and authorship of the Book of Deuter- 
onomy will find it in Professor George F. Moore's article on 
Deuteronomy in the Cyclopcedia Biblica, and in Dr. Driver's 
Introduction to the Book of Deuteronomy in the International 
Critical Commentary. 



THE DEUTERONOMIC CODE 121 

batim by some contemporaneous reporter and then 
miraculously preserved through the intervening 
ages ; or else, as the modern scholar does, that this 
form was employed by a later prophet in accord- 
ance with the custom of his times, to give dramatic 
effect to teaching which he intended should embody 
the spirit of Mosaic prophecy in its application to 
a later age. It depends partly on the way in which 
the laws in the Book of Deuteronomy fit the re- 
forms initiated by Josiah, which are declared by 
the historian to have been based upon a law-book 
found in the temple. It depends partly on the 
title of the book itself, which signifies the " second 
law," or " second giving of the law," a title which, 
derived apparently from the earliest ages, at least 
indicates that from the earliest ages the book was 
regarded as a second or supplementary edition of 
the Mosaic legislation. 

It will be seen from this brief sketch that those 
are mistaken who suppose that the new criticism 
regards the Book of Deuteronomy as a pious fraud. 
This would, indeed, seem to me to be an impossible 
hypothesis. Pious frauds have been perpetrated 
by pious men, it is true, but always either in some 
selfish or in some ecclesiastical interest — that is, 
either for the benefit of the writer or for the 
advantage of some churchly organization. An 
ethical book founded upon fraud would be an 
anomaly in literature. The Book of Deuteronomy 
is not an ecclesiastical book ; it is not written in 
the interest of the priesthood ; it is essentially an 



122 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

ethical book. Its ethical standards are noble, its 
tone throughout pure and practical. It is morally 
inconceivable that such a book should be inspired 
by dishonest motives ; equally inconceivable that a 
great moral revolution, like that wrought in the 
reign of Josiah, should be inspired by a pious 
fraud ; and the modem critic does not regard the 
Book of Deuteronomy as a fraud. Books written 
by one man in the name and phraseology of another 
are not uncommon in literature. Defoe's history 
of the plague of London is not a fraud because it 
purports to be written by one who had passed 
through the scenes of the plague, though it was not 
written for fifty years afterward ; Plato's report of 
the dialogues of Socrates is not a fraud because no 
man can tell how much of the thought in the dia- 
logues belongs to Socrates and how much to Plato. 
Seven centuries after Moses a prophet writes a 
book, in which he incorporates the current tradi- 
tions respecting Mosaic laws ; elaborates, modifies, 
interprets, and applies them to existing social 
conditions; couches them in the language of the 
great statesman ; after a fashion of historians in 
all ages puts them dramatically in the statesman's 
mouth ; and then, as if to prevent any reader from 
imagining that he intends these manuscripts to be 
taken as actual rescripts of the original law, de- 
scribes them as a second law.^ To call this a fraud 
is to confound moral distinctions by treating a 
common literary method, pursued by writers in all 

^ Deut. xvii. 18, Septuagint version. 



THE DEUTERONOMIC CODE 123 

ages of the world without obloquy, as though it 
were a literary forgery.^ 

It is in the Book of the Covenant and in the 
Book of Deuteronomy that we are chiefly to find 
the political institutions of the Hebrew people, 
though light is thrown upon those institutions by 
incidental references in their sacred history. Nor 
is it difficult to trace the institutions which grew 
up in the eight centuries that intervened between 
these two publications, back to the essential prin- 
ciples involved in the Book of the Covenant : the 
religious basis of the state, the ethical nature of 
law, and its sanction in the conscience of the 
people. 

All Oriental nations were absolute despotisms. 
In the Hebraic commonwealth the three depart- 
ments of government, the executive, the legislative, 
and the judicial, were clearly discriminated. There 
were two representative assemblies : one the Jewish 
house of representatives, known as the Great Con- 
gregation, which reflected the popular will; the 
other a smaller body, the elders of the tribe or the 
nation, who acted as counselors of the executive, 
cooperated in making treaties, and exercised certain 
judicial functions. It was the Great Congregation 
that on the report of the twelve spies voted not to 

1 " The trutli that ' the law came by Moses/ that the foundation 
of this sacred jurisprudence was laid by this founder, that the 
germs of the late growth proceeded from him, is not subverted by 
finding that from one period to another there was a gradual ex- 
pansion." George P. Fisher, D. D., Address before International 
Congregational Council, Boston, Sept., 1899. 



124 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

undertake the subjugation of Canaan, inducted into 
office Josiah, ratified the selection of Saul as king, 
carried into effect the proposal of Solomon to 
establish the ark of the Lord at Jerusalem.^ It 
was the elders who made treaties, tried capital 
offenses, and enforced the execution of the laws. 
It was both judicial and executive.^ There was 
a judiciary who were apparently elected by the 
people themselves ; ^ who were forbidden to take 
fees from their suitors or to pay any regard to the 
social standing of those who had causes before 
them ; and whose authority, it is clear from many 
instances in Jewish history, was far from being 
merely nominal.* Executive authority was, after 
the time of Saul, vested in a king, but his powers 
were limited. The Jewish monarch was a consti- 
tutional monarch ; no foreigner could receive the 
imperial crown, no cavalry could be organized by 
the king to harry the kingdom, no heavy taxation 
could be levied for the benefit of the king and his 
court ; he could establish no harem, he was himself 
subject to the laws of the realm.^ That these re- 
strictions on the authority of the king, though 
sometimes disregarded, were real, not merely for- 
mal, is evident from the fact that so unscrupulous 
a despot as Ahab was not able to accomplish so 

1 Num. xiv. 1-5, 10 ; xxvii. 18-23 ; 1 Chron. xiii. 1-8 ; 1 Kings 
viii. 1-5 ; Num. xi. 16, 17 ; Josh. ix. 18-21 ; Jer. xxvi. 10-16. 

2 Josh. ix. 18-21 ; Jer. xxvi. 10-16. 

3 Exod. xviii. 19-26 ; Deut. i. 9-14. 

4 Lev. xix. 15 ; xxiv. 22 ; Deut. i. 17 ; xvi. 19 ; Exod. xxii. 2L 

5 Deut. xvii. 14-20. 



THE DEUTERONOMIC CODE 125 

simple an act of despotism as the unjust absorption 
of a peasant's estate except by bribing the regularly 
constituted judges of the land.^ "With these pro- 
visions for the protection of the people from the 
despotic power of their rulers, unparalleled in that 
period of history, were other provisions equally 
remarkable for their justice and humanity. Mr. 
Robert IngersoU has spoken of the cruel code of 
Moses, under which hundreds of crimes were pun- 
ished with death. In point of fact, only twelve 
crimes were punished with death under this code,^ 
whereas, as late as a. d. 1600, two hundred and 
sixty-three were punished with death in England. 
Attainder was forbidden,^ human life, liberty, and 
property were guarded by special provisions in 
accordance with the spirit of the Ten Command- 
ments — that is, the Hebrew constitution ; * special 
provisions were made for the detection of secret 
crime ;^ public instruction was provided for both 
by laws imposing this duty on the parents and by 
provision for instruction through itinerant Levites.^ 
The only limitation on free speech permitted was a 
provision making the preaching of false gods a 
capital offense ; and even a false prophet could not 
ordinarily be punished by the state until the events 

1 1 Kings xxi. 1-16. 

2 See a list of them in Smith's Bihle dictionary, article Laws 
of Moses. 

3 Dent. xxiv. 16. 

* Deut. xxii. 8 ; Exod. xrii. 1-14 ; Deut. xxiv. 7. 
6 Deut. xxi. 1-9. 

6 Deut. vi. 7; Exod. xiii. 14, 15; Deut. xxxi. 9-13; xxxiiL 10; 
Neh. viii. 5-8; 2 Chron. xvii. 8, 9; xxx. 22 ; xxxv. 2, 3. 



126 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

whicli lie had assumed to foretell belied ids predic- 
tions, proving him to be an impostor. The boldness 
of the ancient prophets, illustrated alike by the 
utterances which have been preserved to us and by 
dramatic incidents in their careers, could have 
been possible only in a country where freedom of 
speech was a fact as well as a theory.^ With these 
provisions of justice were others, scarcely less re- 
markable, of a philanthropic character. Strangers 
were protected from oppression; the widow and 
the fatherless were especially guarded ; wages were 
to be paid to the hired servant from day to day ; 
gleanings in the vineyard were to be left for the 
poor ; caste and class distinctions were prohibited.^ 
This spirit of humanity is especially characteristic 
of the Book of Deuteronomy.^ 

1 Deut. xviii. 21, 22; Jer. xxxviii. ; 2 Sam. xii. 1-7; 1 Kings 
3nd. 17-24. 

2 Exod. xxii. 21, 22; Dent. i. 17; xvi. 19; xxiv. 14, 15; Lev. 
six. 10, 15 ; xxiv. 22. 

8 "Humanity is the author's ruling motive, -wherever consider- 
ations of religion or morality do not force him to repress it. 
Accordingly, great emphasis is laid upon the exercise of philan- 
thropy, promptitude, and liberality towards those in difficulty or 
•want, as the indigent in need of a loan (xv. 7-11 ; xxiii. 19, 20) ; 
a slave at the time of his manumission (xv. 13-15), a neighbor 
•who has lost any of his property (xxii. 1-4), a poor man obliged 
to borrow on pledge (xxiv. 6, 12 f.), a fugitive slave (xxiv. 
7), a hired servant (xxiv. 14 f.) ; and in the law for the dis- 
position of the triennial tithe (xiv. 28 f.), the landless Le-vdte (xii. 
12, 18 f. ; xiv. 27, 29 ; xvi. 11, 14 ; xxvi. 11, 12 f .), and the stranger 
. — i. e., the unprotected foreigner settled in Israel. The fatherless 
and the widow are repeatedly commended to the Israelite's charity 
or regard (xiv. 29 ; xvi. 11, 14; xxiv. 17, 19, 20, 21 ; xxvi. 12 f. ; 
xxvii. 19; and the stranger, x. 19; xxvi. 11), especially at the 



THE DEUTERONOMIC CODE 127 

The laws of a nation are partly a record of its 
life, partly an interpretation of its ideals. That 
this is true of the laws of the Hebraic common- 
wealth is made clear both by their historical and 
their political books. The former contain many 
instances of violations of law by kings ; the latter 
indict the people, and especially the nobility, for 
transgressing its humane provisions. Nevertheless, 
it would be impossible to mention any people of 
even a much later age than that of the Book of 
Deuteronomy, or even that of the restoration after 
the exile, whose law and constitution embodied an 
ideal so noble as that embodied in the Hebrew civil 
laws, or any people whose history shows the exist- 
ence of political institutions so essentially just, 
free, and humane. Did this ideal exist only in 
the mind of Moses ? Are the laws and institutions 
of the Hebraic commonwealth to be compared 
with the ideals of Plato's " Republic " or More's 
" Utopia " ? or do those laws and constitutions 
represent a real, vital, national growth? Do we 
here see the fundamental principles of justice, lib- 
erty, and humanity suggested by a single prophetic 
genius? or do we see them on actual trial in a 
unique nation ? Traditionalism holds the first 
opinion, modern scholarship holds the second. The 
second does not detract from but rather adds to 

time of the great annual pilgrimages (xii. 12, 18 ; xiv. 27 ; xvi. 
11, 14; xxvi. 11), when he and his household partook together 
before God of the bounty of the soil, and might the more readily 
respond to an appeal for benevolence." The International Critical 
Commentary, Deuteronomy, page xxiv. 



128 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

the significance and the value of the revelation 
which that political code contains. Eegarded as 
an attempt by a long line of prophets to embody 
in the institutions of the primitive people the 
essential motives of justice, liberty, and humanity, 
this code is more eloquent than when regarded as 
an ideal given only by one prophet, comprehended 
only by him, the serious execution of which was 
never really attempted. 

The growth of the ecclesiastical code or canon 
law of Hebraism will be the subject of considera- 
tion in the next chapter. 



J 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CANON LAW 

The doctrine that the Hebrew code is a produc- 
tion of the gradual growth of the Hebrew people 
is applied by the modern scholar to their religious 
as well as to their civil codes. He does not believe 
that the Levitical system of worship, as it is con- 
tained in the books of Exodus and Numbers and 
especially that of Leviticus, was given by God to 
Moses in the form in which it is there found ; he 
supposes that only the germ of it existed in the 
time of Moses, and that from that germ the elabo- 
rate system grew by a gradual process reaching its 
final form in the time of Ezra, about the year 450 
B. c.i To a certain school of theologians this hypo- 

^ All modern, that is, literary or non-traditional, students of the 
Bible accept this g'eneral view ; that is, they agree that the g-ermi- 
nant principles of the Levitical code are Mosaic, but its devel- 
opment was gradual, and its final codification, in the form in 
which we now possess it, was post-exilic and probably due to 
Ezra. Thus : " The principles by which the priesthood was to be 
g-uided were laid down, it may be supposed, in outline by Moses. 
In process of time, however, as national life grew more complex, 
and fresh cases requiring to be dealt with arose, these principles 
would be found no longer to suffice, and their extension would be- 
come a necessity. Especially in matters of ceremonial observance, 
which would remain naturally within the control of the priests, 



130 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

thesis seems destructive not only of certain forms of 
worship, but of certain essential aspects of divine 

regulations such as those enjoined in Exod. xx. 24-26 ; xxii. 29, 
30 ; xxiii. 14-19 would not long continue in the same rudimen- 
tary state ; fresh definitions and distinctions would he introduced, 
more precise rules would he prescribed for the method of sacrifice, 
the ritual to be observed by the priests, the dues which they were 
authorized to receive from the people, and other similar matters. 
After the priesthood had acquired, through the foundation of 
Solomon's Temple, a permanent centre, it is probable that the 
process of development and systematization advanced more rapidly 
than before. . . . Although, therefore, there are reasons for sup- 
posing that the Priests' Code assumed finally the shape in which 
we have it in the age subsequent to Ezra it rests ultimately upon 
an ancient traditional basis ; and many of the institutions pro- 
minent in it are recognized, in various stages of their growth, by 
the earlier pre-exilic literature, by Deuteronomy and by Ezekiel." 
Introduction to the Literature of ike Old Testament, S. R. Driver, 
D. D., pp. 153, 154. " The code of Holiness comes into the his- 
toric field first in connection with Ezekiel. It is a codification of 
the immemorial practice of the priests of Jerusalem going back to 
Aaron and Moses. The priest-code and the document which con- 
tains it cannot be proven till Ezra's time. It was a larger codifi- 
cation of the priestly ritual and customs coming down by tradition 
from Moses and Aaron in the priestly circles of Jerusalem, which 
had been carefully conserved as holy relics in the priestly families 
among the exiles, as bearing in them sacred memories and holy 
promises." The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, by Charles 
A. Briggs, D. D., p. 157. Professor Wellhausen traces the de- 
velopment of the Jewish hierarchy and thus states his conclusion : 
" To any one who knows anything about history, it is not neces- 
sary to prove that the so-called Mosaic theocracy, which nowhere 
suits the circumstances of the earlier periods, and of which the 
prophets, even in their most ideal delineations of the Israelite 
state as it ought to be, have not the faintest shadow of an idea, is, 
so to speak, a perfect fit for post-exilian Judaism, and had its actu- 
ality only there. Foreign rulers had then relieved the Jews of aU 
concern about secular affairs ; they had it in their power, and were 
indeed compelled to give themselves wholly up to sacred things. 



THE CANON LAW 131 

truth. The churchman, that is, he who attaches 
great value to the institutional forms of thought 

in which they were left completely unhampered. Thus the tem- 
ple became the sole centre of life, and the prince of the temple the 
head of the spiritual commonwealth, to which also the control of 
political afEairs, so far as these were still left to the nation, natu- 
rally fell, there being no other head." History of Israel, Julius 
Wellhausen, pp. 150, 151. Dr. Bruce sees in the organization of 
a hierarchy and a sacrificial system the sign of the degeneracy 
of the Jewish people. He says, " Judaism, apart altogether from 
critical questions, was distinct from Mosaism. The distinguishing 
feature of Mosaism, as we have seen, was that it asserted the 
supremacy of the moral as compared with ritual. This funda- 
mental principle the prophets reasserted with new emphasis and 
widened range of application, so showing themselves to be the true 
sons of Moses. On the other hand, the distinctive character of 
Judaism was that it put ritual on a level with morality, treated 
Levitical rules as of equal importance with the Decalogue, mak- 
ing no distinction between one part of the law and another, but 
demanding compliance with the prescribed ceremonial of worship 
as not less necessary to good relations with God than a righteous 
life. This was a new thing in Israel ; and it was a great down- 
come ; a descent from liberty to bondage, from evangelic to legal 
relations with God, from the spirit to the letter." He neverthe- 
less thinks the Code was a providential provision to meet that de- 
generacy and keep alive the spirit of Mosaism, and further says, 
*' It needs but a hasty and general survey of the priestly Code to 
be satisfied that there was much in it that tended towards the 
realization of the Mosaic ideal of a holy people faithful to Jeho- 
vah. One outstanding feature in it is the prominence given to the 
idea of sin. ... It was well, it was a real advance in moral cul- 
ture, that the religious system should be so altered as to develop 
a deeper consciousness of sin. It tended to a more exalted view 
of the holiness of God, and to greater heedfulness in conduct. . . . 
The centralization of worship in a single sanctuary, and the com- 
mitment of the whole sacrificial service into the hands of a priestly 
class, if an innovation as regards Mosaism, had certainly a ten- 
dency to prepare men for the religion of the spirit which came in 
with Jesus. In old times, it would appear, killing for food and 



132 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

and worship as they are found in the church, 
generally also attaches great value to the sacri- 
ficial system as it is embodied in the church creed 
and expressed in the church ordinances. He re- 
gards the sacrificial system of the Old Testament 
as divinely organized and ordained ; he reveres it 
as an ancient type foreshadowing the sacrifice of 
Christ and fulfilled in the Gospel ; he looks upon 
it, therefore, as the most central feature of the Old 
Testament revelation ; and it is not strange that he 
resists with the utmost vigor any view which treats 
the Levitical system as a human development, and 
the sacrificial system therein contained as tempo- 
rary in its nature and now forever passed away, 
because it has fulfilled its purpose.^ But to this 

sacrifice were the same thing, and every man was his own priest. 
Sacrifice was a thing of daily occurrence, and an essential element 
of religion. The centralization of worship changed all that. Sac- 
rifice becam.e an affair of stated seasons, public sacrifice for all 
Israel threw into the shade private sacrifice, and the offering of 
victims became the business of a professional class. But religion 
is not an affair for two or three seasons in the year, but for daily 
life. Therefore men had to find out for themselves means for the 
culture of piety independent of Levitical ritual. . . . The syna- 
gogue, with its prayers and its reading of the scriptures, met the 
want, and educated men for a time when temple and sacrifice 
would finally disappear." Apologetics, by Alexander B. Bruce, 
D. D., pp. 262, 268, 269, 270. 

^ For a good statement of this view and a good presentation of 
the argument from the traditional point of view in favor of the 
Mosaic authorship of the Levitical Code, see The Booh of Leviticus, 
by S. H. Kellogg, D. D., Expositor's Bible Series. The following 
paragraph (page 25) iQustrates the spiritual interpretation of the 
Book of Leviticus by this school. After saying that one of the 
present uses of the " book is that it is a revelation of the charac- 



THE CANON LAW 133 

view of the Levitical system the modern literary 
study of the Bible necessarily conducts us, and it 
would be a mistake for one who is attempting to 
interpret the methods and results of that study to 
conceal from himself or from his readers the con- 
clusions to which it will necessarily lead. How the 
modern or literary or scientific student of the Bible 
thinks the Levitical code was gradually formed, 
and what providential purpose he thinks it was in- 
tended to serve in the history of the race, it is the 
object of this article to show. Theology is what 
men think about religion; ritual is the way in 
which they express their religious feeling when 
they unite to give it combined expression. It is 
this ritual, this religious expression of the life of 
Israel, we are to consider in this paper. 

In the earlier and primitive states of society the 
family is the only organization. This is what is 
known as the patriarchal age. The father is the 

ter of Grod," he says, " More particularly, Leviticus is of use to us 
now, as holding forth, in a singTilarly vivid manner, the funda- 
mental conditions of true religion. The Levitical priesthood and 
sacrifices are no more, but the spiritual truth they represented 
abides and must abide forever ; namely, that there is for sinful 
man no citizenship in the kingdom of God apart from a High 
Priest and Mediator with a propitiatory sacrifice for sin. These 
are days when many, who would yet be called Christians, belittle 
atonement, and deny the necessity of the shedding of substitu- 
tionary blood for our salvation. Such would reduce, if it were 
possible, the whole sacrificial ritual of Leviticus to a symbolic 
se//'-offering of the worshiper to God. But against this stands 
the constant testimony of our Lord and His apostles, that it is 
only through the shedding of blood, not his own, that man can 
have remission of sin." 



134 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

king and lawgiver ; he enacts the laws and directs 
the industries of the family. If the family is to 
fight in defense of itseK or in attack on others the 
father is the commander-in-chief ; he organizes his 
older sons and his servants, arms them and directs 
the battle. When the battle is over and thanks- 
giving is to be offered to the gods for the victory, 
the father doffs his military garments, puts on the 
garments of a priest, and conducts the worship. 
He is lawgiver, he is soldier, he is priest. But as 
society grows more complex and families are asso- 
ciated together in tribes, and later the tribes into 
a nation, a differentiation necessarily takes place. 
There become different classes for different voca- 
tions. There grows up an agricultural class, a 
mercantile class, a military class, — one to cultivate 
the soil, one to trade with other nations, one to 
fight the nation's battles ; and by the same pro- 
cess of human development there grows up a wor- 
ship-leading class. It is ordinarily called a priestly 
class. There is some protest in the modern com- 
munity against a priestly class. But if we are to 
have government we must have men to govern ; if 
industry, we must have men to work ; if war, we 
must have men to fight; and if we are to have 
public worship, we must have men to conduct such 
worship. Thus society is developed out of the 
simple patriarchal form into the more complex 
form. The priestly order arises in this process as 
naturally and as necessarily as the industrial, the 
military, or the ruling order. 



THE CANON LAW 135 

But this is not all. During the patriarchal age, 
this family is an itinerant family. It leads a 
nomadic life ; has no permanent dwelling-place ; 
lives in tents. Its religion moves with it, and its 
place of worship is as simple as its forms of wor- 
ship. Whenever the tent is raised, the altar is 
put up ; whenever the tent is taken down, the altar 
is left as a memorial, or is demolished. There are 
no temples, as there are no houses. But as society 
grows more complex and men begin to live in 
houses, and then in towns and cities, out of the 
altar grows the temple, as out of the father grew 
the priesthood ; and there grow permanent places 
for worship, as there grow classes to lead the wor- 
ship. And as society grows more wealthy, the 
place of worship grows more ornate and more 
elaborate. And with this growth of a priestly 
class and this accompanying growth of a temple or 
a church there grows a more elaborate ritual. The 
simple method of the primitive age no longer satis- 
fies the highly developed society; worship grows 
more complex. While men are children, they 
bring their gifts to God, in the spirit with which 
little children bring their gifts to their parents. 
The boy is thankful — he brings an apple to his 
father as a token of his love ; he has done wrong 
and he cannot quite get his stammering lips to say 
" I am sorry," so he offers some unusual service to 
his father as a token of his penitence. An offer- 
ing is the child's natural expression of his childish 
emotion. So sacrifices grew up among men ; they 



136 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

offered their gifts to God as a token of their grati- 
tude, or their penitence, or their desire for God's 
companionship. In the primitive society these 
gifts are primitive ; but when the society has grown 
complex and the temple has been built and the 
priestly class organized, the sacrificial system is 
formulated also, and the sacrifices which were so 
simple and childlike become elaborate. 

But the offering becomes deeper in its signifi- 
cance as well as more complex in its form. In the 
story of the Fall the fundamental facts of sin and 
its consequences are pictorially illustrated in a 
childhood story. One of the first effects of that 
sin, as there illustrated, and as seen in all human 
history, is a realization of the great difference 
between good and evil, and a consciousness of sin, 
growing out of this experience ; a sense of separa- 
tion from God, who is good, and a fear of him and 
a desire to flee from him. In the primitive state 
of society, man is comparatively innocent, because 
ignorant ; he is not consciously guilty, because he 
does not know enough to discriminate between the 
good and the evil. But as society grows larger, 
more complex, more ebullient, man grows more 
subject to temptation and more liable to sin. And 
with this liability to sin there grows the conscious- 
ness of guilt ; and with this consciousness of guilt, 
a sense of the separation from God which it in- 
volves. For if God is good and man is evil and 
man becomes conscious of this and conscious also 
of the separation between good and evil, he becomes 



THE CANON LAW 137 

conscious of the separation between God and him- 
self. Thus the religious service is transformed, 
not only by the growth in complexity of society, 
but by the growth in moral consciousness of the 
individuals who compose society. Formerly, the 
father was only the leader of worship ; now the 
priest becomes the necessary mediator ; men think 
that they cannot go to God direct ; because of the 
separation which sin has produced, they must have 
some holy priest to go to him on their behalf and 
in their stead. Once the altar was simply the 
place where men had met God; now the temple 
comes to be regarded as the only place where they 
can meet God ; they think he is nowhere else save 
in this temple, under this roof, surrounded by this 
incense, sung to by this choir. Once they thought 
any gift would serve that was brought to God as 
an expression of their good will ; now there is a 
prescribed ritual and the belief that sinful man can 
come to God only in the method which has been 
so prescribed. 

The religion of the Book of the Covenant, the 
oldest book in the Bible, embodies the primitive or 
childhood conception of religion; the religion of 
an age when people have not yet become deeply 
conscious either of their own sin or of the holiness 
of God, and therefore not deeply conscious of any 
separation between themselves and God ; the reli- 
gion of an age when as yet the father is the natural 
priest, when any place will serve as a place of 
worship, when any form will serve as a means of 



138 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

approach to the Father. Accordingly, in this Book 
of the Covenant there is only one reference to 
priests, and that in the introduction to it, unless 
the declaration that the entire people shall be a 
kingdom of priests belongs to the Book of the 
Covenant, as probably it does belong to the epoch 
which that book represents ; there is only one 
reference to sacrifices, and that in connection with 
the Passover, — and it is to be remembered that 
the Passover sacrifice was offered by the fathers 
for their families, not by the priests ; and there is 
no reference to any sacred place or temple where 
worship is to be conducted, and only one to an 
altar ; that reference is as foUows : — 

" Gods of silver and gods of gold ye shall not make 
unto you. An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, 
and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings, and thy 
peace-offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen : in every 
place where I record my name I will come unto thee, 
and I will bless thee. And if thou make me an altar of 
stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone : for if thou 
lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it." ^ 

The meaning is clear : Jehovah desires no elab- 
oration of decoration : Let the altar be of earth 
such as any man can easily cast up with a spade ; 
or if the people are not satisfied with an altar of 
earth, and want to make one of stone, it must be 
of the simplest kind ; it must not be hewn stone ; 
and they must not imagine that there is but one 
1 Exod. XX. 23-25. 



THE CANON LAW 139 

place where acceptable worship can be offered; 
wherever they are, there they may put their altar ; 
wherever they are, there Jehovah will come and 
bless them.^ 

Such are the liturgical characteristics of this 
Book of the Covenant. God is a righteous God, 
who demands righteousness of his children, and 
demands nothing else. There is no one sacred 
place — he may be worshiped anywhere ; no great 
temple — an altar of earth will serve ; no priest- 
hood — the people is a kingdom of priests, and 
any man may offer sacrifice. 

But at the time when this simple religion was 
set forth by Moses, the religions of the surround- 
ing nations were complicated and elaborate. In 
Phoenicia, in Egypt, in Babylon, there were a sacred 
priesthood, a holy temple, and an elaborate sacrifi- 
cial system. In the expressive language of Pro- 
fessor Eawlinson, " The Temple dominated over the 
Palace and is itself dominated by the Tomb, both 
the Temple and the Tomb being the expression 
of religious ideas." He thus graphically de- 
scribes the ecclesiastical character of the com- 
munity in which emancipated Israel had been sub- 
ject. "Everywhere in Egypt gigantic structures 
upreared themselves into the air, enriched with all 
that Egyptian art could supply of painted and 
sculptured decoration, dedicated to the honor, and 
bearing the sacred name, of some divinity. The 
great temple of each city was the centre of its life. 

^ See Gen. xxviii. 16. 



140 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

A perpetual ceremonial of the richest kind went on 
within its walls, along its shady corridors, or 
through its sunlit courts — long processions made 
their way up or down its avenues of sphinxes — 
incense floated in the air — strains of music re- 
sounded without pause — all that was brightest 
and most costly met the eye on every side — and 
the love of spectacle, if not deep religious feeling, 
naturally drew to the sanctuary a continual crowd 
of worshipers or spectators, consisting partly of 
strangers, but mainly of the native inhabitants, to 
whom the ceremonies of their own dear temple, 
their pride and their joy, furnished a perpetual 
delightful entertainment. At times the temple 
limits were overpassed, and the sacred processions 
were carried through the streets of the town, 
attracting the gaze of all; or, embarking on the 
waters of the Nile or of some canal derived from 
it, glided with stately motion between the houses 
on either side, a fairer and brighter sight than 
ever. The calendar was crowded with festivals, 
and a week rarely passed without the performance 
of some special ceremony, possessing its own 
peculiar attractions. Foreigners saw with amaze 
the constant round of religious or semi-religious 
ceremonies, which seemed to know no end, and to 
occupy almost incessantly the main attention of 
the people. Nor was the large share which re- 
ligion had in the outer life of the nation the sole 
or the most important indication of the place which 
it held in their thoughts and regards. Keligion 



TEE CANON LAW 141 

permeated the whole being of the people." ^ The 
Hebrew slaves breathed an air of formalism. 

But this religion was not ethical. It did not 
concern itself with the moral life of the people. 
It was purely theological and ceremonial. With 
this elaborate system of religious ceremonialism 
the simple religion of Mosaism, that God is a 
righteous God and demands righteousness of his 
children and demands nothing else, came into 
uncompromising conflict. The Levitical Code, as 
the literary critic interprets the Old Testament, is 
the product of this conflict between the simple 
principles of Mosaism and the elaborate ritualism 
of paganism, much as the mediaeval religion was 
the product of the conflict between the simple 
teachings of Jesus Christ and the elaborate ritual- 
ism of pagan Rome which those teachings were 
destined to supplant. If a stream of pure water is 
to wash out a sewer, it can do so only by entering 
the sewer. If a new life is to purify a community, 
it can do so only by entering into that community, 
and it must, in the very process of purifying, take 
on to some extent the impurities from which it is 
to cleanse the community. 

In the Old Testament we can trace this process. 
We see this simple religion of Mosaism — God is a 
righteous God, who demands righteousness of his 
children and who demands nothing else ; they may 
bring their offerings where they will, as they will, 

1 History of Ancient Egypt, George Rawlinson, M. A., vol. i. 
pp. 321, 322. 



142 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

through whose hands they will — we find this 
religion entering into the life of the nation. At 
first there is no temple, no one place of religious 
service where alone sacrifice may be offered, no 
priestly order which alone may offer sacrifice. 
Gideon offers sacrifice at Ophrah ; Saul at Gilgal ; 
Samuel and David at Bethlehem ; Elijah at Car- 
mel.^ Nor are these violations of the divine law ; 
they are clearly approved — sometimes approved 
by a signal revelation of the divine favor. When 
Elijah, who is no priest, offers the sacrifice on 
Mount Carmel, the fire falls from heaven in wit- 
ness that God has approved his offering. It is 
clear that during all this period of their history 
the children of Israel knew no law requiring all 
men to go up to Jerusalem and offer their sacri- 
fices at the temple there, or requiring all sacrifices 
to be offered by priests. As during this early 
history of Israel there is no exclusive priesthood, 
no temple, no definite place of worship, so there is 
no elaborate ritual. The sacrifices during that 
early history are, for the most part, simple thank- 
offerings. Outside the Levitical code there are no 
indications of offerings to atone for sin. 

But the nation is growing, not only in complex- 
ity of life, but also in moral consciousness. Its 
prophetic teachers, its providential schooling, are 
not in vain. The people grow in the knowledge of 
good and evil. Their appreciation of the holiness 

1 Judges yi. 24 ; 1 Sam. xv. 21 ; xvi. 5 j xx. 6 ; 1 Kings xviii. 
29-38. 



THE CANON LAW 143 

of God is developed ; their consciousness of their 
sins against him is deepened. They feel increas- 
ingly the moral separation between good and evil, 
and therefore between a good God and an evil na- 
tion. At the same time they are growing, in some 
other directions, not so wisely nor so well. They 
mingle with other peoples and borrow from them. 
They abandon the simplicity of their primitive 
republicanism and adopt the monarchical system. 
The nation becomes a highly organized nation, 
with a standing army and a permanent civil ad- 
ministration. It is not strange that it borrows 
from other nations religious as well as political 
ideas and methods. Sometimes the people wor- 
ship Jehovah, but betrayed in images borrowed 
from Egypt; sometimes they substitute the wor- 
ship of Baal and Astarte for that of Jehovah ; 
sometimes they suffer the double worship to be 
carried on contemporaneously and even in the 
same sacred edifice.^ Imitating their neighbors in 
ecclesiastical as in civil matters, the people build a 
temple, ordain a priesthood, organize a sacrificial 
system, and unconsciously tend to centralize all 
worship in the temple, to confine all religious func- 
tions to the priesthood, to eschew all forms of wor- 
ship not conducted according to the ritual. At 
length they are carried into captivity. For seventy 
years they live exiles in Babylon, separated from 
their holy city, their temple, their priesthood, their 

1 1 Kings xii. 28, 29 ; Judges ii. 11 ; vi. 25 ; 1 Kings xvi. 31, 
32-; xi. 5 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 13. 



144 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

sacrificial system. Their religious life begins to 
take on new forms. They gather together their 
sacred books : the Bible grows into a recognized 
collection of sacred literature. They organize 
places for religious instruction and religious wor- 
ship without sacrifice : the synagogue is born, and 
public and family prayer appear. They learn that 
God is not a Palestinian God, that he is to be met 
with elsewhere than in the temple of Solomon or 
the city of David. Ezekiel sees a vision of Jeho- 
vah in the desert ; the Great Unknown beholds the 
manifestation of him in the starry firmament.^ 
Because the people scorn their captives they scorn 
their captives' gods. Jehovah is no longer merely 
a God above all other gods, he is the only God ; 
the gods of the pagans are for the first time called 
not-gods.2 The people are learning that their God 
is the God of all nations ; that all places are sacred 
places ; that he may be approached by prayer with- 
out a sacrifice and by the layman without a priest. 
The New Judaism is born, and it is, as so many 
new births are, a restoration of the oldest Judaism, 
a return to the truths of the Book of the Covenant, 
never really accepted by the people, yet never 
wholly forgotten by their greatest spiritual leaders. 
At the same time, because the people are shut 
off from those methods of worship to which they 
have been accustomed, they long to reestablish 
them. Their patriotism and their religious insti- 
tutions become inseparably connected. Judaism 

1 Ezek. i. ; Isaiah xl. 25, 26. 2 jer, y. n ; xvi. 20. 



THE CANON LAW 145 

means to them a return to the Holy City, and that 
means also a return to all that the Holy City con- 
notes — their own temple, their own priesthood, 
their own liturgical system. And when the time 
of the restoration comes, and they return to their 
native land, many of the most deeply religious 
among them are eager to rebuild the temple, re- 
establish the priesthood, reorganize the ancient 
service. But all this tends to an excessive sacer- 
dotalism, and that in turn, by a natural reaction, 
to vigorous protests against sacerdotalism. An 
ecclesiasticism and a Puritanism grow up together. 
The representatives of the ecclesiastical party urge 
the rebuilding of the temple, the reconstruction of 
the priesthood, and the rehabilitation of the liturgy.^ 
Now for the first time appears the doctrine that 
sacrifice can be acceptably offered only in Jerusa- 
lem ; that it is profanation for any other than a 
priest to offer it ; that only by sacred sacrifice so 
offered in that temple can sin be atoned and the 
sinful soul purified.2 But the representatives of 
the Puritan party will hear nothing of all this. 
They protest against it in utterances quite as vigor- 
ous as any of Luther's against Eomanism, or any 
of the Puritans of the seventeenth century against 
sacerdotalism. Even before the restoration, Isaiah, 

^ Hag. chap. i. See 'Kixa, passim. 

2 Deut. xii. 6, 11, 14, 26 ; 2 Chron. vii. 12 ; Lev. xvii. 4, 8, 9 ; 
xvii. 11, -with Heb. ix. 22 ; 2 Chron. xxvi. 18-21. Uzziah's (or Aza- 
riah's) punishment for offering sacrifice is not mentioned in Kings : 
2 Kings xiv. 21, 22. 



146 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

one of the greatest of the prophets, sees the growth 
of this ecclesiasticism contemporaneously with the 
moral deterioration of the nation, and protests 
against it. He says : — 

" Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom ; give 
ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. 
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto 
me ? saith the Lord : I am fuU of the hurnt offerings of 
rams, and the fat of fed heasts ; and I dehght not in 
the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When 
ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at 
your hand, to trample my courts ? Bring no more vain 
oblations ; incense is an abomination unto me ; new 
moon and sabbath, the caUing of assembHes, — I cannot 
away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new 
moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth : they 
are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear them. And 
when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes 
from you : yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not 
hear : your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make 
you clean ; put away the evil of your doings from be- 
fore mine eyes ; cease to do evil : learn to do well ; seek 
judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, 
plead for the widow." ^ 

Amos, the first of the great prophets whose writ- 
ten utterances have been preserved to us, is equally 
explicit, and in one respect even more so, as in the 
following passage : — 

" I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no de- 
light in your solemn assembhes. Yea, though ye offer 
1 Isa. i. 10-17. 



THE CANON LAW 147 

me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I will not 
accept them : neither will I regard the peace offerings 
of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise 
of thy songs ; for I wiU not hear the melody of thy 
viols. But let judgment roll down as waters, and 
righteousness as a mighty stream." ^ 

He does not believe that this liturgical system 
dates from the days of Moses. He says : — 

" Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and offerings in the 
wilderness forty years, O house of Israel ? " ^ 

Jeremiah is still more explicit in his affirmation 
that this sacrificial system is not a revival of Mosa- 
ism but a corruption of it : — 

" Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel : Add 
your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat ye 
flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor com- 
manded them in the day that I brought them out of the 
land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices : 
but this thing I commanded them, saying. Hearken 
unto my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be 
my people : and walk ye in all the way that I command 
you, that it may be well with you." ^ 

1 Amos V. 21-24. 2 jj/^. y. £5. 

" Jer. yii. 21-23. The conservative or traditional critics quote 
Jer. xxxiii. 18 as evidence that Jeremiah means by his language 
here, not to deny that God commanded sacrifices through Moses, 
but only, as Dr. C. von Orelli puts it, to deny " that sacrifice was 
the motive or occasion, and so the substantive content of God's 
legislation." The Prophecies of Jeremiah, by Dr. C. von Orelli, 
p. 78. The same interpretation is more fully given in the Bible 
Commentary on Jer. vii. 21-23. The interpretation which I ac- 
cept is the one adopted by the modem school, as by George Adam 
Smith, for example, who says that Jeremiah " distinctly declares 
that in the wilderness God prescribed no ritual to Israel." The 
Book of the Twelve Prophets, vol. i. p. 171, note. See also p. 104. 



148 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

That Amos and Jeremiah were correct, that the 
Levitical system does not date from the days of 
Moses, that it is no part of that simple, primitive 
religion which finds its exposition in the Book of 
the Covenant, appears absolutely certain to the 
literary or scientific student of the Bible. This 
appears to him clear from the inconsistency of the 
Levitical code in its form and to some extent in its 
spirit with the Book of the Covenant, admittedly 
the oldest and most authentic interpretation of the 
spirit of Moses and his teaching ; from its palpable 
ill-adaptedness to the nomadic life in the wilder- 
ness ; from the fact that it was not only disre- 
garded during all the earlier history of Israel, but 
disregarded with never a sign of divine disapproval, 
and sometimes with explicit signs of divine ap- 
proval ; from the nature of the ritual itself, and 
its kinship in form with that of pagan peoples ; 
from the testimony of the great prophets already 
cited ; and from the further consideration to be 
pointed out that it has unmistakably served its pur- 
pose, and is now no longer recognized as an integral 
part of Judaism by any considerable number of 
Jewish teachers. 

The literary or scientific student does not, then, 
believe that the Levitical code embodies a divinely 
ordained system revealed to Moses, super naturally 
preserved, and intended, either in itself or as a fore- 
shadowing of the divine sacrifice, to be of eternal 
value to the human race. But neither does he 
believe it to be of pagan origin, an impediment to 



TEE CANON LAW 149 

the growth of the human race, because a mere cor- 
ruption of spiritual religion. We are not left to 
reject as wholly false every religious movement 
which is not wholly true. The Puritans were mis- 
taken in thinking that there is no place in God's 
kingdom for a Quaker no-ritual; the Cavaliers 
were mistaken in thinking that there is no place 
for a Puritan no-ritual ; the Koman Catholics were 
mistaken in the Middle Ages in thinking that there 
is no place for a Protestant no-ritual. And the 
Quakers, the Puritans, and the Protestants were 
equally mistaken in thinking that there is no place 
in God's world for the ritual which they sometimes 
hated and sometimes scorned. For God opens 
more doors to himself than we imagine, and lets us 
come to him by what pathway we will : with in- 
cense or without incense ; with candles and an altar 
or with communion-table and no altar ; through the 
expression of the silent prayer, or through the ex- 
pression of the Book of Common Prayer, or through 
the expression of the Eoman ritual in the eleva- 
tion of the host. 

The Levitical code, then, in the form in which 
we now find it in the Bible is not, — to this conclu- 
sion I have been endeavoring to conduct the reader, 
— a divine and eternal order of worship, nor yet 
the revelation of a divine and eternal principle of 
worship ; it is the codification of ecclesiastical cus- 
toms which had grown up through eight or nine 
centuries of Jewish life ; it borrowed most of its 
form and some portion of its underlying theological 



150 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

conception from pagan religions. Yet it was not 
wholly Jewish, neither was it wholly pagan ; it was 
a combination of paganism and Mosaism, a graft 
of the former upon the latter, or the transformation 
of the former by the spirit of the latter. But the 
customs embodied in this code furnished a protec- 
tion to the religion of Israel at a time when a more 
purely spiritual and less formal religion would not 
have sufficed for that purpose. It had within it- 
self, as we shall see, elements which insured its 
destruction when it had served its purpose; that 
purpose was to furnish a bridge across which a 
people not fully emancipated might pass from pa- 
ganism, which is founded on the fear of the gods, 
to Mosaism, which is founded on reverence for the 
one and only God, and so to Christianity, which is 
founded on God's love for man and the possibility 
of man's spiritual union with him. 

There are two methods by which a great reform 
may be accomplished, — the iconoclastic and the 
constructive. Politically France illustrates the o^e 
method, England the other. In both countries had 
grown up a feudal system ; France destroyed it in 
a single revolution, gathered the people in a general 
assembly, and undertook to build from the founda- 
tion a republic consecrated to liberty, equality, and 
fraternity. England in successive epochs poured 
a new and popular spirit into her old forms : she 
retained the crown as a symbol of the nation, but 
without political power; the prime minister, but 
made him the people's servant; the Parliament, 



THE CANON LAW 151 

but centralized its authority in the House of Com- 
mons, that is, of the common people. The French 
seemed at the time the more expeditious; the 
English has proved the more efficacious. The con- 
trast between Puritanism and Episcopacy illustrates 
the same principle in the religious realm. Puri- 
tanism repudiated the bishops, dissolved the old 
ecclesiastical organization, set aside the altar, the 
liturgy, and the priesthood, made of the temple a 
meeting-house, treated the minister as only a lay- 
man intrusted with a temporary function, resolved, 
in a word, to dispense with everything which 
the mediaeval church held dear, because every- 
thing which it held dear had been corrupted to 
base uses. Episcopalianism retained the bishop, 
but bereft him of his autocratic powers; called 
her clergy priests, but refused to regard them as 
necessary mediators between the laity and God; 
retained the altar, but not the sacrifice of the mass ; 
preserved the ritual, but set it to new uses. The 
Reformation was not less in the Episcopal than in 
the Puritan churches ; the one was not less than 
the other the vehicle of a new spirit. Both methods 
of reform are legitimate ; each has its perils. The 
dangers of the radical method are those of revolu- 
tion and reaction ; the dangers of the conservative 
method are those of unconscious return through 
the old forms to the old evils which they embodied. 
The history of Israel illustrates both of these 
methods. The paganism which surrounded Israel 
was thoroughly false: false in its conception of 



152 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

God as an unmoral force; false in its notion 
that he is a God of wrath and must be appeased 
by blood ; false in its notion that his favor can 
be secured by sacrifice ; false in its notion that he 
calls on his children for any other offering than to 
do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
him. There were two ways in which this falsity 
might be overthrown. One was the way of the 
prophets, the Hebrew Puritans, the radicals of 
that age. It was directly to attack the ceremonial 
system ; to affirm, as one Hebrew Psalmist did, that 
God desires not sacrifices ; as Isaiah did, that he did 
not require them ; as Amos did, that he despised 
feast days and incense and would not accept their 
offerings ; as Micah did, that he required nothing 
but justice, mercy, and humility.^ The other way 
was that of the priests, the ecclesiastics, the church- 
men of that age. It was to accept the spiritual 
truth of Mosaism and pour it into the formal- 
ism which had been borrowed, but modified, from 
the pagan nations, and make paganism itself the 
vehicle of divine truth. This method gave birth to 
the Levitical code ; which was like the pagan cere- 
monialism in that it prescribed a temple, an altar, 
a priesthood, a sacrificial system, but which was 
unlike the pagan code in five very important 
particulars. 

I. In pagan countries the ecclesiastical system, 
with its priests, its temple, and its worship, was 
independent of the people. The Church was a 
1 Psalm li. 16 ; Isa i. 11-15 ; Amos v. 21, 22 ; Micah vi. 6-8. 



THE CANON LAW 153 

department of the State and supported out of the 
revenues of the State. The priests were State 
officials ranking next to the king himself, if not 
outranking him. In Egypt a considerable portion 
of the land, perhaps as much as one third, was 
made over to the priestly class ; sacred slaves be- 
longing to the priests cultivated the lands for 
them; their estates were exempt from taxation; 
their wealth was continually augmented by the 
voluntary gifts of the devout or the more reluctant 
contributions of the superstitious ; they were, in 
short, the wealthiest, as they were the most privi- 
leged, class in the country.^ A similar independ- 
ence of the church was manifested far down into 
European history. In mediaeval Europe the church 
was supported by payments for ecclesiastical ser- 
vices, which, at first voluntary, became compulsory ; 
by tithes collected by force of law like other taxes ; 
and by rentals of land, from one tenth to one fifth 
of which, in the time of Henry YIII., even in 
England, had passed into the possession of the 
ecclesiastics.^ In the Levitical church the priests 
could own no land ; the church was not supported 
by the State ; the offerings which sustained it were 
voluntary. It is true that the Levitical code fixed 
on one tenth of the agricultural produce as a proper 
proportion to be given to the support of the church,^ 
but there was no means of collecting this tenth 

1 Eawlinson's History of Ancient Egypt, i, 449, 450. 

2 Hallam's Constitutional History of England, chap. ii. 

3 Lev. xxvii. 30-32 ; Deut. xiv. 22-28. 



154 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

from those who did not choose to give it. The 
Levitical church was dependent on the free-will 
offerings of the people, enforced only by public 
sentiment. 

II. As the support of the church was not com- 
pulsory, so neither were its services. The pagan 
code made sacrifice obligatory. To refuse to sacri- 
fice to the gods was to hazard one's fortime, one's 
family, one's life. But the Levitical code declares 
that aU offerings must be the free-will gift of the 
worshiper. " He shall offer it of his own voluntary 
will at the door of the tabernacle," is the provision 
of the code in its introductory paragraph.^ It is 
true that our revised version gives a radically 
different translation: "He shall offer it at the 
door of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted 
before the Lord." It is doubtful which of these 
translations is correct : whether the meaning is 
that the worshiper shall offer a sacrifice which is 
acceptable to the Lord, — that is, in accordance with 
God's will ; or whether he shall offer one that is 
acceptable to himself, — that is, of his own free 
wiU. But whichever of these translations we accept 
as correct, there is no doubt that the former epi- 
tomizes the spirit of the Levitical code. Its 
provisions, as my brother, the late Dean of the 
New York University Law School, once said to 
me, are regulative, not mandatory, and no lawyer 
would think of interpreting them otherwise. They 
regulate customs already existing ; they do not 

1 Lev. i. 3. 



THE CANON LAW 155 

require a service now first prescribed. " If," says 
the code, " his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the 
herd, let him offer a male without blemish. ... If 
his offering be of the flocks, ... he shall bring it 
a male without blemish. ... If the burnt sacrifice 
for his offering to the Lord be of fowls, then he 
shall bring his offering of turtle-doves, or of young 
pigeons. ... If thou bring an oblation of a meat 
offering baken in the oven, it shall be unleavened 
cakes mingled with oil, or unleavened wafers 
anointed with oil." All is voluntary ; all is con- 
ditioned on the free wiU of the worshiper. The 
offerer may bring or not ; though, if he brings, the 
code defines certain qualities of the gift and what 
shall be done with it. The reader wiU search in 
vain in the Levitical code for any penalty pro- 
nounced against the non-worshiper, and the history 
of Israel in vain for any penalty iuflicted on one 
for refusing to worship. 

III. This voluntary character of the sacrificial 
system of the Levitical code is emphasized and the 
principle involved in it is carried out in another 
principle of that code which is even more important, 
and is in quite as striking a contrast with the sacri- 
ficial systems of the pagan religions : the offerings 
were inexpensive. In paganism the value of the 
sacrifice was estimated by its cost. Thousands of 
cattle, costly incense, prisoners taken captive in 
war, sometimes the child of the worshiper, were 
offered as sacrifices. The aim was to appease the 
wrath of the gods, or to satisfy their supposed 



lo6 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

insatiable desire, and nothing was esteemed too 
precious for this purpose. The prevented sacrifice 
of Isaac by Abraham, the accomplished sacrifice of 
his daughter by Jephtha, the legendary self-sacri- 
fice of Curtius to save Rome from the widenino: 
chasm which threatened to engulf it, are illustra- 
tions familiar to every reader of this character 
of sacrifice prior to or outside the influence of 
Mosaism. The oft-quoted text of Micah, " Will 
Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or 
with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give 
my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my 
body for the sin of my soul?" refers doubtless to 
this pagan conception of sacrifice, with which his 
hearers were only too familiar. 

The spirit of the Levitical code was wholly 
opposed to this conception. Human sacrifice was 
unknown ; hecatombs were unknown ; the value 
of sacrifice was never measured by its costliness. 
It was true that the worshiper must not bring to 
God the lame, the halt, the blind ; that is, he must 
not offer to God what he would offer to no one 
else, because that would be no true offering, but 
mere false pretense. But so that it was without 
blemish he might bring what offering he would, — 
a bullock, a lamb, a goat, a pair of doves, a sheaf 
of wheat. The value of the offering depended, not 
on its cost, but on the experience which it repre- 
sented. The three divine experiences of a soul 
toward its God were all recognized in the Levitical 
code, and each was represented by its appointed 



THE CANON LAW 157 

expression. The worshiper might come to the 
temple conscious of sin and desiring to express his 
penitence ; then he brought a sin-offering or a 
trespass-offering. He might come with a desire 
to renew his consecration to God and reaffirm his 
purpose to devote his life to God's service ; then 
he brought a burnt offering, the consumption of 
which by fire represented his purpose to offer to 
Jehovah all that he had. He might come with a 
heart full of gladness and a desire to express his 
gratitude to and his joy in the Lord ; then he 
brought a peace-offering or a thank-offering. The 
offerings were classified, not according to their 
costliness, but according to the expression which 
they represented ; and if they did not represent 
the real and vital experience, no cost in the offering 
could make it acceptable to Jehovah. A single 
quotation from this code will serve to illustrate this 
general principle : — 

" If a soul sin, and commit a trespass against the Lord, 
and lie unto his neighbor in that which was delivered 
him to keep, or in fellowship, or in a thing taken away 
by violence, or hath deceived his neighbor ; or have 
found that which was lost, and lieth concerning it, and 
sweareth falsely ; in any of all these that a man doeth, 
sinning therein : then it shall be, because he hath sinned 
and is guilty, that he shall restore that which he took 
violently away, or the thing which he hath deceitfully 
gotten, or that which was dehvered him to keep, or the 
lost thing which he found, or all that about which he 
hath sworn falsely ; he shall even restore it in the prin- 



158 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

cipal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, and 
give it unto him to whom it appertaineth, in the day of 
his trespass offering. And he shall bring his trespass 
offering unto the Lord, a ram without blemish out of the 
flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass offering, unto 
the priest : and the priest shall make an atonement for 
him before the Lord : and it shall be forgiven him for 
anything of aU that he hath done in trespassing there- 



Sacrifice did not take the place of righteousness. 
Before the sin-offering could be given to the Lord, 
reparation must be made to the one who had been 
wronged. Two centuries after this code had been 
formulated, Christ said to his disciples, " If thou 
bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest 
that thy brother hath aught against thee ; leave 
there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way ; 
first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come 
and offer thy gift." ^ He did but give expression 
in a slightly different form to the essential princi- 
ple embodied in this ecclesiastical code — that resto- 
ration must precede sacrifice. So far as we know 
the history of those times, no such abuse ever grew 
up under the Levitical code as that form of indul- 
gence which aroused the indignation of Luther in 
the sixteenth century. 

lY. Still more important is another principle 

contained in this code, so radical that I suspect its 

statement here will arouse the suspicion, if it does 

not evoke the stout denial, of the reader : the sac- 

1 Lev. vi. 2-7. 2 Matt. v. 23, 24. 



TEE CANON LAW 159 

rifices of the Levitical code were never offered to 
satisfy the wrath of God, nor as a substitute for 
penalty pronounced against sin, nor as a means of 
securing divine pardon and a restoration of divine 
favor. Sacrifice and penalty are never connected 
in the Old Testament ; sacrifices are never offered 
by the sinner as a means of securing remission of 
penalty. The Levitical sacrifice was a means for 
the' purification of the sinner, not for the pacifica- 
tion of Jehovah.i The curious ceremonial which, 
according to this code, accompanied and distin- 
guished the so-called Day of Atonement illustrates 
in a striking manner this principle. On that day, 
from two goats brought out before the congregation, 
one was selected by lot as a sacrifice to Jehovah, 
the other as a scapegoat. The first was killed be- 
fore the Lord ; on the head of the other — the 
scapegoat — the sins of the people were laid in 
confession by the priest, and he was then led off 
into the wilderness, that so he might " bear upon 
him all their iniquities to a solitary land," — a land 
from which he could never return to bring back to 
the people the sins from which they were thus de- 
livered.2 The significance of this primitive object- 
lesson should be as clear to us now as it was to the 
people then. In it there was no suggestion of a 

1 Lev. xvii. 11, " it is the blood that maketh an atonement for 
the soul," ■will be regarded by some as an exception to this state- 
ment. If so it stands alone ; but I do not think it is an exception ; 
there is nothing in the phraseology that implies the pacification of 
an angry God. 

2 Lev. xvi. 



160 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

wrath to be appeased, or a penalty to be escaped ; 
its suggestion was sin removed and a people set 
free from its burden. The object of sin-offering 
in paganism was always to appease the wrath of the 
gods ; in the Levitical system, to purify the soul of 
the worshiper. In paganism sacrifice was a means 
of escape from penalty ; in Leviticalism, a means of 
escape from sin. 

V. Finally, the Levitical code provided for its 
own destruction. In that code it was expressly 
provided that sacrifice could be offered only in the 
temple at Jerusalem by the priests. In the begin- 
ning, as we have seen, this was not the case : sac- 
rifice might be offered anywhere by any devout 
soul.^ Whatever the intent of the framer of this 
exclusive provision, its providential intent is clearly 
indicated by the result which it produced. When 
the city of Jerusalem was captured and the temple 
destroyed, the entire sacrificial system and the en- 
tire hierarchy organized to administer it came to 
an end. Both have now entirely disappeared from 
Judaism. Not a trace is left behind of either altar, 
sacrifice, or priest. The simple and fundamental 
principles of the early Mosaism remain — the faith 
that God is a righteous God, and demands right- 
eousness of his children and demands nothing else. 
But no Jew offers sacrifice ; no Jewish priest con- 
ducts worship ; no Jewish altar or temple exists in 
all the world. No longer anywhere is heard the 
lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, the cooing 
1 Compare Lev. xvii. 4, 8, 9, with Exod. xx. 24. 



THE CANON LAW 161 

of doves, no longer anywhere are seen the rivers of 
blood in connection with any worship of the one 
God such as characterized the temple at Jerusalem. 
The sacrificial code has served its temporary pur- 
pose and has perished absolutely, leaving in Juda- 
ism no remnant in existing institutions even to 
memorialize it. 

It is true that some remnants of this sacrificial 
system have passed over into the Christian church. 
They are seen in the bloodless sacrifice of the 
mass in the Roman Church and in some Anglican 
churches, and in clauses stating in terms a sacrificial 
theory of the atonement in some Protestant creeds. 
Occasionally still is heard the doctrine, supposed to 
have been foreshadowed by the Levitical code, that 
a great sacrifice has been offered once for all as a 
means of satisfying divine justice, if not of appeas- 
ing divine wrath and securing a purchased pardon 
which God cannot consistently grant without an 
innocent victim to bear the penalty which of right 
should be inflicted upon the guilty. But this rem- 
nant of an ancient ritual gradually disappears be- 
fore the growing faith in the love of God, as the 
snows even in the remoter crevices of the rock 
are melted by the spring sun; gradually we are 
learning that sacrifice is not a means by which 
penitence secures pardon, but the method by which 
mercy confers life. It is not the child's sacrifice 
which wins forgiveness from the mother ; it is the 
mother's sacrifice which wins repentance from the 
child. It is not the sacrifice offered by man, or on 



162 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

his behalf, which purchases remission of penalty 
from a righteous judge ; it is the sacrifice offered 
by God and on his behalf which achieves remission 
of sin for the repentant sinner. Slowly, very 
slowly, we are learning the meaning veiled in that 
solemn and splendid story miscalled the sacrifice 
of Isaac, — " God will provide himself the lamb for 
a burnt offering, my son." ^ 

In Homer, to ward off a pestilence which Phoe- 
bus, in her wrath, has sent upon the Greeks, " the 
wise Ulysses " offers up a 

" hallowed hecatomb 
To Phoebus, for the Greeks ; that so the god 
Whose wrath afflicts us sore may be appeased." 

In the Fourth Gospel the Apostle John declares 
that 

" God so loved the world that he gave his only be- 
gotten Son, that whosoever beheveth in him should not 
perish but have everlasting Hfe." 

In the pagan conception God is wrathful ; in the 
Christian conception God is love. In the pagan 
conception man is wiser and better than the gods 
who are destroying him ; in the Christian concep- 
tion man is destroying himself by his own igno- 
rance and sin. In the pagan conception the sacrifice 
is offered by man to the gods ; in the Christian 
conception it is offered by God for man. In the 
pagan conception the peril comes from God to 
man, the sacrifice goes from man to God ; in the 

' 1 Gen. xxii. 8. 



THE CANON LAW 163 

Cliristian conception the peril comes from man to 
himself, the salvation comes from God for man, 
through God's act of se(/'-sacrifice. The history of 
sacrifice in the Old Testament is the history of the 
process by which the pagan conception was trans- 
formed into the Christian conception ; the Levitical 
Code is the bridge by which Israel passed over 
from the pagan belief that sacrifice is a condition 
of forgiveness which God exacts, to the Christian 
doctrine that self-sacrifice is the method by which 
God confers forgiveness. 



CHAPTER VII 

HEBEEW FICTION 

The suggestion that there are works of fiction 
in the Bible certainly at one time would have 
aroused protest, if not resentment, and it is possi- 
ble that there may still linger in the minds of 
some a remnant of this feeling. It is largely due 
to two reasons. The first is an impression that 
the suggestion of fiction in the Bible has been 
invented by those who desire to eliminate from it 
the supernatural. Doubtless it is true that there 
are some critics who desire to eliminate the super- 
natural from the Bible, and who therefore seek to 
show that everything which seems to be super- 
natural is imaginative. This is not the scientific, 
it is not the literary, spirit.^ The true scientific 
spirit does not assume that there can be nothing 
supernatural in life ; it studies life to ascertain 

^ Dean Farrar's statement of his own position on this subject 
may be accepted as an admirable definition of the general position 
of all evangelical seholai-s of the modern or evolutionary school. 
He says : " I withhold my credence from no occurrence — how- 
ever much it may be called ' miraculous ' — which is adequately 
attested ; which was wrought for adequate ends ; and which is in 
accordance with the revealed laws of God's immediate dealing 
with man." The Bible, by F. W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S., p. 241. 



HEBREW FICTION 165 

what is in it. The truly literary spirit does not 
assume that there is nothing supernatural in litera- 
ture ; it studies literature to ascertain what is its 
character and what are the motive and purpose 
of each author. No literary critic would think of 
classifying the story of the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ among works of fiction or imagination. He 
might think the narrative incorrect, but he would 
not doubt that it belongs among historical works 
— that is, that the authors believed that they were 
narrating facts. The mere circumstance that an 
incident narrated in the Old Testament is extraor- 
dinary does not afford the slightest indication that 
it is fiction. The question whether any narrative 
is history or fiction is not identical with the ques- 
tion whether it is true or false. The literary clas- 
sification of a narrative depends upon the motive 
of the author, not upon the accuracy of the narra- 
tive. The author of fiction gives free play to his 
imagination, and his work is not the less fictitious 
because he interweaves some historical truth with 
his imaginative narrative ; the historian assumes 
to narrate facts, and his work is history despite 
the fact that he may be misled into the most seri- 
ous errors in his narrative. Herodotus is a writer 
of history ; although Macaulay assures us that 
"he is from the first to the last chapter an in- 
ventor." Dumas is a writer of fiction ; although 
his editor affirms that " contemporary authority 
can be cited for every anecdote or incident not di- 
rectly connected with the distinctively romantic 



166 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

portions of the narrative." The question whether 
any particular narrative in the Old Testament — 
the Book of Jonah, for example — is history or 
fiction is not to be determined by considering 
whether the book contains extraordinary events, 
but by considering the question whether its gen- 
eral spirit and structure are such as to justify the 
belief that the author thought himself narrating 
facts as they actually occurred, or whether he con- 
sciously gave a free rein to his imagination as he 
wrote. 

A second reason for the objection to the sugges- 
tion that there is fiction in the Bible is a remnant 
of a Puritan prejudice which everywhere except in 
its relation to the Bible has long since disappeared. 
The Puritans opposed all manifestations of the im- 
agination. They destroyed the pictured windows 
in the churches ; took down the pictures from the 
walls of the houses ; broke in pieces the statues in 
the niches; closed the doors of the theatres and 
forbade the drama ; and banished the works of 
fiction from their tables. No doubt some readers 
of this article can remember, in their own child- 
hood days, how novels of every description were 
looked upon askance, if not with absolute reproba- 
tion, in their own circles. We have emerged into 
an epoch in which this banishing of the imagina- 
tion is no longer permitted because it is no longer 
necessary. We admit the pictured windows to the 
churches ; we hang pictures on the walls of our 
houses ; we have replaced the statues even of 



HEBREW FICTION 167 

pagan deities in their niches, reopened the doors 
of the theatres, and novels lie on all our tables. 
In brief, we recognize the fact that imagination is 
a divinely given faculty, not to be suppressed, but 
to be freely used. Why, then, should we think it 
strange that God should have used the same fac- 
ulty in the education of the Hebrew race? If 
to-day it is one of his instruments for the develop- 
ment of humanity, why should we think it impos- 
sible that in the olden time he should have inspired 
men to use their imagination for the moral and 
spiritual culture of the race ? 

In truth, the works of imagination have a very 
high and a very varied service to perform. Fiction 
is, in the first place, entertaining and gives rest. 
The little child, left alone at night by the mother, 
whispers softly to itself a story and so talks itself 
to sleep; when we have lost the imagination of 
our childhood, we ask some genius who still retains 
it to tell us his story, that he may sweep out of our 
minds for a little while the cares and perplexities 
of our busy day, that in his narrative we may find 
rest and refreshment. Fiction is sometimes a valu- 
able vehicle for the conveyance of instruction. It 
is true that there are critics who say that a work 
of imagination never should be didactic ; but who 
would banish from literature Bunyan's " Pilgrim's 
Progress," or " Oliver Twist," or " Put Yourself in 
His Place" because they are didactic? Some of 
the greatest of our novelists have written for the 
purpose of illustrating truth, moral, religious, or 



168 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

sociological. Fiction is descriptive and interpre- 
tative. The imagination tells us much of life with 
which otherwise we should be unfamiliar. If we 
desire pictures of old-time life we shall find them 
more vivid in " Henry Esmond," " Lorna Doone," 
or " Quentin Durward," than in Green's " History 
of England ; " because the novelist has a free hand 
with which to picture the life that he desires to set 
before us. If we desire to know how the other half 
of the world lives, we shall find it more vividly por- 
trayed in such a novel as Walter Besant's "All 
Sorts and Conditions of Men " than in such a sta- 
tistical work as Charles Booth's "Labor and the 
Poor in London." Fiction is interpretative of life 
as well as descriptive of it. The great novelist 
understands the principles of human nature and 
portrays them — not philosophically, not psycho- 
logically, but dramatically ; so that by sharing his 
imagination we share his understanding. If he be 
really a great dramatist, he realizes not only the 
outer life, but the moral forces which are at work 
in the world, and he so portrays life that those 
moral forces appear before us; he does not so 
much give instruction as impart life through the 
ministry of life. It would be a mistake to say that 
Shakespeare wrote " Macbeth " to show the evils 
of ambition, or " Othello " to show the evils of 
jealousy, or " Hamlet " to show the evils of irreso- 
lution ; but, none the less, the great interpreter of 
human life could not tell the story of jealousy, of 
ambition, or of irresolution without making us feel, 



HEBREW FICTION 169 

rather than see, their evil. Thus fiction not only 
entertains, instructs, describes, interprets, but in- 
spires ; by showing noble life, it quickens noble 
life in us ; by showing ignoble life, it inspires us 
with hate against what is ignoble. 

Fiction in the Old Testament serves all these 
purposes. Some of these Hebrew stories are vastly 
entertaining. If one doubts^ it, let him read the 
Old Testament story of Daniel or Samson or 
Elijah to a group of children ; he will find them 
not less interested than they would be in any story 
to be found in Greek or Roman literature. Some 
of these Hebrew stories are didactic, written for 
the purpose of conveying moral instruction ; the 
parables of Christ are preeminently so. Some 
of them are simply descriptive. We get, for in- 
stance, from the account of Eliezer's courtship of 
Rebecca for his master's son ^ a better picture of 
the way in which courtships were conducted in 
patriarchal times than we could possibly get from 
accurate history. We find in these stories, also, 
interpretations of life ; love and jealousy, joy and 
sorrow, courage and cowardice, virtue struggling 
with vice and vanquishing it, vice struggling with 
virtue and vanquishing it, all this we find por- 
trayed with moral simplicity nowhere surpassed, 
with dramatic power never degenerating into the 
melodramatic. In them all, with the entertain- 
ment, the didactic teaching, the description of ex- 
ternal life, the portrayal of character, we find life 

^ Gen. chap. xxiv. 



170 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

imparted througli life ; and therefore in them all 
we can discover that inspiration which is more than 
instruction. It is a mistake to think, as men of 
the Puritan temperament have sometimes seemed 
to think, that all life comes through the intellect, 
and that we must understand before we can re- 
ceive. A great deal comes through the sympa- 
thies, the emotions, the imagination, and through 
these the writer of fiction often addresses himself 
to us more effectively than either the historian, 
the philosopher, or the moralist. 

A single illustration taken from the Book of 
Judges will serve to demonstrate to the more con- 
servative reader that there is some fiction in the 
Old Testament. It is the parable of the trees, 
and reads as follows : — 

"The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king 
over them : and they said unto the olive-tree, Reign 
thou over us. But the oHve-tree said unto them, Should 
I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honor God 
and man, and go to be promoted over the trees ? And 
the trees said to the fig-tree, Come thou, and reign over 
us. But the fig-tree said unto them, Should I forsake 
my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be pro- 
moted over the trees ? Then said the trees unto the 
vine, Come thou, and reign over us. And the vine said 
unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God 
and man, and go to be promoted over the trees ? Then 
said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and 
reign over us. And the bramble said unto the trees. 
If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come 
and put your trust in my shadow : and if not, let fire 



HEBREW FICTION 111 

come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of 
Lebanon." ^ 

No one will doubt that this is fiction. And yet 
it would be quite as possible for God to make a 
tree that could talk as an ass that could talk, or a 
big fish that could swallow a man and a man that 
could live three days and three nights in the belly 
of the big fish. There is no question of possible or 
impossible with God. Our question always must 
be, not what God can do, but what it is reasonable 
to believe that he has done. We believe that this 
parable of the trees is fiction, because it has the 
qualities of fiction, because it is more reasonable to 
suppose that the author invented the story to serve 
as the vehicle of a moral, than to suppose that God 
created talking trees and brought them together in 
a quasi-political convention for that purpose. This 
parable, therefore, not only illustrates the truth 
that there is fiction in the Old Testament, but it 
indicates the method by which we are to determine 
what is fiction and what is history. 

All readers recognize that the parables in the 
Bible are fiction ; many of them are less ready to 
recognize its folk-lore.^ By folk-lore I mean the 

^ Judg-es ix. 8-15. 

2 Mrs. L. S. Houghton has recently published in the N. Y. 
Evangelist an admirable series of Studies in the Old Testament 
which, doubtless, -will be republished in book form. Two of them 
are devoted to " Folk Lore in the Old Testament." Folk lore 
she defines as " the narrative of events passed along from lip to 
lip down through the ages." As illustrations of such stories, of 
which the inspired writers have made use, she specifies Joshua's 



172 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

stories which mothers tell their children, and which 
pass from generation to generation, sometimes in 
later history printed, sometimes never reduced to 
print ; all peoples have such folk-lore, and the 
Hebrew people had theirs. Such were some of 
the stories subsequently incorporated in the Book 
of Genesis ; such some of the tales respecting 
Elisha ; such, probably, the account of the boy- 
hood exploits of King David ; such, certainly, the 
story of Samson. 

Samson lived in the colonial days of Israel, when 
there was no king, and every man did what was 
right in his own eyes. His birth was heralded by 
an angelic messenger ; he was consecrated to the 
life of a Nazarite from his cradle by his mother ; 
he drank no wine, ate no grapes, suffered the locks 
of his hair to go uncut, and in his youth gave 
token of that extraordinary strength which has 
since rendered his name proverbial. 

We first meet this Hebrew unheroic hero on 
his way to Timnath. A Philistine maiden has 
captured his fancy by her beauty, and, despite the 
law, the protests of his parents, the mission to 
which he is called by God as deliverer of his peo- 
ple, to Timnath he will go. The Philistine maiden 
plays the coquette with him, cajoles him out of his 
secret, and tells to his Philistine guests the answer 

staying of the sun and moon, tlie story of Samson, certain of the 
Elijah and EKsha stories, certain of the narratives in Genesis 
which the element of folk lore enters into and modifies, and many 
other of the Biblical narratives. 



HEBREW FICTION 173 

to the riddle whicli he has proposed. To pay his 
wager of thirty changes of raiment he goes alone 
across the country and takes the raiment from a 
Philistine city; but his pride is wounded by the 
deceit which has been practiced upon him, and 
when the Philistine coquette marries one of the 
guests who had come to his betrothal, he catches 
three hundred jackals,^ ties them together two by 
two by the tails, fastens a firebrand to each pair, 
and lets them loose in the harvest season to set 
fire to the Philistines* standing wheat. Then, 
when the Philistines, with singular injustice, visit 
their wrath on the bride and her father, putting 
her to death, Samson, with characteristic fickle- 
ness, smites them hip and thigh with a great 
slaughter. We next find him in the hands of 
more formidable foes. When the Philistines come 
up to avenge their wrongs on the nation which 
shelters Samson, and the Israelites deliver him 

^ " Many interpreters, reflecting that the solitary habits of the 
fox would make it very difficult to catch such a number, and that 
Samson's great strength would be of no avail in such an under- 
taking, suppose that the author meant jackals, which roam in 
packs, and could easUy, it is said, be caught by the hundred. 
That the Hebrew name may have included jackals as well as 
foxes is quite possible ; the Arabs are said in some places to eon- 
found the jackal with the fox, and in the modern Egyptian dialect 
the classical name of the fox is given exclusively to the jackal. 
The decision of the question is of importance only to those who 
take the story as a veracious account of an actual occurrence. 
They should consider, however, whether the author would thank 
them for their attempts to make Samson's wonderful perform- 
ance easy." Judges : in the International Critical Commentary, by 
George Foot Moore, p. 341. 



174 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

bound into their hands, he submits without oppo- 
sition, only to break the cords which bind him, 
leap upon his would-be captors with a shout, and 
slay a thousand of them with his own hands, with 
no other weapon than the jaw-bone of an ass, and 
afterwards celebrates his exploit with a running 
couplet : — 

" With the jaw-bone of an ass, 
I assailed my assailants ; 
With the jaw-bone of an ass, 
Have I slain a thousand men." ^ 

Twenty years later we meet him in Gaza, a Phi- 
listine city, whither, still yielding himself a slave to 
his unbridled self-will and self-indulgent spirit, he 
has gone in pursuit of a Philistine woman. The 
Philistines close the gates and set a watch to catch 
him at the dawn. At midnight he goes out, takes 
the gates and posts upon his back and carries them 
off, in scornful disdain of their boasted strength. 
Such a man, weak in the conceit of his own strength, 
never learns life's lessons. He falls in with an- 
other Philistine woman, sets his heart upon her, 
and, with a folly for which there is no palliation, 
walks open-eyed into the trap the treacherous Deli- 
lah has set for him. She undertakes to get from 
him the secret of his superhuman strength. Three 
times he mocks her with lying answers ; three times 
discovers her treachery, and, despite it all, at last 

^ Judges XV. 16. There is a play upon the Hebrew word which 
means both ass and heap that cannot be imitated in the English ; 
as though he had said, " With the jaw-bone of an ass, asses on 
asses, have I slain a thousand men." 



HEBREW FICTION 175 

tells her the secret, lies down to sleep with his head 
upon her lap, to awake, his vow broken, his locks 
shaven, his strength gone, and himself an easy prey 
to his enemies. In servitude he learns that lesson 
of self-denial which he would learn nowhere else, 
grinds away in the prison-house of his foes, little 
by little gathers his strength, and in one last bar- 
baric yet heroic effort brings down the temple of 
the Philistines' god, Dagon, upon himself and upon 
the worshipers assembled to exult over him. 

This story, found anywhere but in Hebrew lit- 
erature, we should assume to be that half-fiction, 
half-history of which such stories in primitive lit- 
erature are always composed ; not only we should, 
we do assume it to be such ; for the story of Samson 
in Hebrew literature and the story of Hercules in 
Greek literature remarkably parallel each other.^ 
To the same Semitic origin both names are traced 
by linguists. Both are men of extraordinary 
strength; of both specifically the same traditions 
are told ; both slay a lion with their own hands ; 
both suffer death, though in different ways, at the 
hands of their treacherous wives. One, a captive in 
Philistia, summoned to make sport for his enemies, 
pulls down the Temple of Dagon, and buries him- 
self and the Philistines under its ruins ; the other, 
a captive in Egypt, led forth to be sacrificed to 
Jupiter, breaks the bands which bind him, and 

1 See the parallel traced in detail by Professor George F. 
Moore in his commentary on Judges, The International Criticai 
Commentary, pp. 364, 365. 



176 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

slays the priests and scatters the assemblage. Even 
the custom of tying a lighted torch between two 
foxes in the circus, in memory of the damage once 
done the harvest-fields, was long kept up in Greece 
— a singular witness to the extent of this athlete's 
reputation. The modern or literary critic of the 
Bible, whose point of view is that given in the first 
article of this series, sees no reason for thinking 
that the same substantial stories are fiction when 
found in Greek literature and history when found 
in Hebrew literature. The value of the stories does 
not depend upon their historical vraisemhlance ; 
their value is in their ethical significance. The 
lesson of the life is plain : muscular strength mated 
to moral weakness never makes a hero : the man 
who lacks self-control can never be the deliverer or 
the true leader of a people. 



CHAPTER YIII 

SOME HEBKEW STORIES RETOLD 

That fiction was deliberately used for didactic 
purposes in the parable by the Hebrew is doubted 
by none ; there is no reason to doubt that it was 
half consciously used by story-tellers in folk-lore ; 
and if we judge of Hebrew literature by the ordi- 
nary literary standards, it is equally clear that it 
was sometimes artistically used by skillful story- 
tellers for the entertainment and inspiration of 
their readers. Two notable illustrations of such 
use are afforded, one by an Idyl of the Common 
People, and the other by a Historical Romance. 
The first,^ although it describes scenes taking place 
prior to the organization of Israel as a kingdom, 
was almost certainly written after the return from 
the exile. 

In their captivity the children of Israel had 
learned to hate the heathen with hatred so strong 
that it finds expression in the phrase, " Happy is 
he that shall take thy little ones and dash them 
against the stones." ^ With this not unnatural 

^ The place of Ruth in the Biblical genealogies (Ruth iv. 22 ; 
Matt. i. 5) indicates yery clearly that there is an historical back- 
ground for this story, as its structure indicates very clearly that 
it is in its spirit and form a work of fiction. 

2 Psalm cxxxvii. 9. 



178 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

spirit in their hearts they return to the holy land ; 
in the period of their colonization a new patriotism 
is born, — narrow, intense, bigoted, yet genuine. 
The laws against any fellowship with foreigners are 
revised, if indeed they are not now first enacted ; 
especially marriage with foreigners is condemned 
by the priests with great vehemence.^ Then it is 
that some unknown dramatist writes the story of 
Euth.2 

A Jew and his wife, driven by famine from 
Judea, seek refuge in Moab, a heathen country. 

1 Ezra ix. 11, 12 ; x. 10-17 ; Neh. xiii. 23-27. 

2 I accept, partly for the reasons implied in the above passage, 
a post-exilic date for the Book of Ruth, though the date is con- 
fessedly uncertain ; Dr. Driver places it prior to the exile. In- 
troduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, p. 455. 

Dr. W. Robertson Smith's argument appears to me weighty if 
not conclusive in favor of the later date : " If the book had been 
known at the time when the history from Judges to Kings was 
edited, it eotdd hardly have been excluded from the collection ; 
the ancestry of David was of greater interest than that of Saul, 
which is given in 1 Sam. ix. 1, whereas the old history named no 
ancestor of David beyond his father Jesse. In truth the book of 
Ruth does not offer itself as a document written soon after the 
period to which it refers ; it presents itself as dealing with times 
far back (Ruth i. 1), and takes obvious delight in depicting details 
of antique life and obsolete usages ; it views the rude and stormy 
period before the institution of the kingship through the softening 
atmosphere of time, which imparts to the scene a gentle sweet- 
ness very different from the harsher color of the old narratives of 
the book of Judges. In the language, too, there is a good deal 
that makes for and nothing that makes against a date subsequent 
to the captivity, and the very designation of a period of Hebrew 
history as ' the days of the Judges ' is based on the Deuteronomistic 
additions to the book of Judges (ii. 16 sq.) and does not occur till 
the period of the exile. " Encyclopoedia Britannica, article Ruth. 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 179 

Two sons are born to them, and two daughters-in- 
law come into the home. Then the husband dies, 
the sons die, and the widow and her two daughters- 
in-law, both Moabites, are left. In her poverty- 
Naomi's thoughts return to the land of her fathers, 
and she resolves to return thither. The daughters 
start to go back with her. She pleads with them 
to leave her. " Can I furnish you husbands?" she 
says. " I am too old. And were I to marry and 
to have sons, you could not tarry till they grew. 
Go back, and leave me to my wretchedness." One 
yields. The other, in an ever-memorable address, 
insists on casting in her lot with her mother-in-law : 
" Whither thou goest, I will go ; where thou lodg- 
est, I will lodge ; thy people shall be my people, 
and thy God shall be my God." ^ 

So they come, mother and daughter-in-law, in 
want and wretchedness, to the land from which the 
mother had gone forth some years before. It is 
the time of the barley harvest. An ancient Jewish 
law provides that when men are reaping in their 
fields they shaU leave the chance wheat which faUs 
for the poor to glean.^ This is not, it appears, a 
dead letter; and Ruth goes out into the barley 
harvest-field to glean for herself and her mother. 
She happens to light upon the field of Boaz, and 
begins gleaning, having first asked permission, 
which is granted her. Boaz seems to me to have 

1 Ruth i. 16. 

2 Deut. xxiv. 19-22 ; probably a local custom before it was 
framed into a law. See chapter on The Book of the Covenant. 



180 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

fallen in love with this young widow at first sight, 
for when he sees her he distinguishes her from all 
the gleaners in the field, and asks the reapers who 
she is. Then he summons her, and says to her : 
" Glean on, and if you are thirsty, drink out of the 
same water-jar as the young men ; and when we 
sit down to our noon meal, sit with us and dip 
your morsel of bread in our sour wine." So our 
dramatist depicts the Moabitess eating and drink- 
ing with the pious Jews. He is too wise and too 
artistic to point the moral, but as the Jew reads 
the story his prejudices begin to disappear. After 
the noon meal Boaz tells the young men not to reap 
very carefully. " Be careless," he says, " and drop 
handfuls of barley in your reaping on purpose for 
her." 

One can easily see the picture so vividly put 
before us: these young men reaping, the young 
widow following after and looking with great won- 
dering eyes at their careless ways in leaving such 
handfuls of barley for her to gather, and perhaps 
wondering if they are in love with her, that they 
are so providing for her; and Boaz meanwhile 
looking out of the corners of his eyes, glad in her 
gladness. I wonder whether, when they were mar- 
ried, if he ever told her how it happened? She 
goes back to her mother, and tells the story of her 
adventure. She has lost all hope of a new hus- 
band in leaving the land of Moab and coming to 
Israel, for what Israelite would marry a Moabite ? 
But a mother's cunning is more than a match for 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 181 

either legal provisions or race prejudices. She 
contrives how a good match shall be made for this 
daughter of hers. "Go back," she says, "my 
daughter, and when night has come, and the har- 
vesters lie down to their sleep upon the harvest 
floor, lie down, too, at the feet of Boaz." 

One thing that makes me think that he fell in 
love with her at first sight is that already he had 
sent out into the village to find out who she was, 
and had learned from her neighbors that she was 
a virtuous woman. But love is always timid ; and 
though he is rich, he is, unhappily, too old, and 
has, so he thinks, no chance with this fair young 
widow. But when he wakes, and finds her at his 
feet, and asks, "Who is this?" and learns, in- 
stantly it flashes upon him that there is some one 
else in love beside himself, and he turns to her 
with " Bless thee, my daughter, that thou hast not 
fallen in love with a young man, rich or poor." 
You easily fill up the rest of the sentence ; you 
know with whom she has fallen in love. It is 
quaint courtship of the ancient time ; a charming 
love story, much better told in the old book than 
told here. I hope this telling will send the reader 
to the original. Land that once belonged to Eli- 
melech, Naomi's husband, has been sold. He who 
marries Elimelech's daughter, it would appear, has 
a right to redeem the land, probably by repaying 
to the owner the purchase money .^ We really 
know more about this law from the story of Kuth 
1 Deut. XXV. 7-9. 



182 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

than from any other quarter ; but apparently be- 
fore he can legitimately marry her and redeem the 
land he must offer the privilege to a nearer kins- 
man. They meet with the elders at the gate, an 
informal local court. Boaz proposes to the nearer 
kinsman that he shall redeem the land ; the kinsman 
says, "I will." But Boaz says, "If you redeem 
the land, you must take Euth." " Oh, then," he 
says, " I won't." So Boaz both redeems the land 
and takes Euth. And so the marriage is cele- 
brated. 

And is that all ? Yes, that is all. Just a simple, 
beautiful, idyllic love story of the olden time.^ I 
hardly know whether to try to play the part of 
Greek chorus lest I spoil the story by pointing 
out the moral — the strong, uninterpreted wit- 
ness against race prejudice ; the deep fidelity of a 
woman's heart to a sorrowing companion ; the spir- 
itual appreciation of a higher and better religion 
than that of the Moabite country from which she 
came ; the simple peasant life on the fields of Beth- 

1 "An old family tradition, relig-iously kept because of the 
fame of the house it belonged to, told and retold for many gen- 
erations, and only crystallized and -written down at last after 
many centuries ; there is in brief the origin of the Book of Ruth, 
now newly pictured and set forth for our later day. Whatever 
the date when it was actually written, it still preserved, evidently, 
all its original charm and oral naturalness and simplicity in taking 
on a literary form. And still it keeps for us this freshness, in 
every sympathetic detail, every touch of emotion, and moves us, 
after all these centuries, like some affecting thing of yesterday, — 
a true tale truly and beautifidly told." The Book of Euth, Intro- 
duction by Ernest Rhys, p. i. 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 183 

lehem; and, best of all, the love of one faithful 
man to one faithful woman. We look back along 
those intervening centuries and bless God that 
man's love for woman and woman's love for man is 
as old as humanity and as immortal as God. 

The fourth type of fiction in the Bible is Histori- 
cal Romance, — the story of Queen Esther, a drama 
in four acts : the scene is laid in Shushan, the 
Persian capital, in the time of the exile.^ 

In the first act we see Xerxes, misnamed the 
Great, upon his throne, — a small-minded, self- 
willed, capricious, sensual Oriental despot ; the 
Xerxes who in his campaign against Greece be- 
headed the engineers who built his bridge of boats 
across the Hellespont because the bridge was de- 
stroyed by a storm, and then ordered the sea to be 
scourged ; the Xerxes who, when his friend Pythias 
had given five sons to the army, and asked that the 
eldest might be suffered to remain at home, killed 
the son and cut the body in two, that the army 

1 " The Hebrew Ahasuerus (or Akhashverosh) is the exact cor- 
respondent of the Persian Khshayarsha, which the Greeks and 
Eomans rendered by Xerxes. The writer assumes that more than 
one Ahasuerus is known to his readers, and seeks to make it clear 
to them which Ahasuerus he is speaking* of. First, he notes that 
the subject of his narrative is a real king", and, therefore, not the 
Ahasuerus of Daniel (ix. 1) ; secondly, that he ruled ' from India 
to Ethiopia ' and, therefore, belonged to the later portion of the 
Persian series, since it was well known that the earlier Persian 
monarchs were not masters of India. He thus sets aside the 
Ahasuerus of Ezra iv. 6 (Cambyses), and points with sufficient 
clearness to Xerxes, the son of Darius Hystaspis." The Bible 
Commentary, Esther, p. 475. 



184 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

might pass between the two parts; the Xerxes 
who, with the first disaster that came to his army, 
fled, like the coward that he was, back to his em- 
pire again, leaving Mardonius to extricate it from 
the toils into which his own folly had led it ; the 
Xerxes who, leaving the affairs of state in stronger 
hands, offered a premium to any man who would 
discover a new form of pleasure, and gave himself 
up to weeks of feasting and revelry. This Xerxes, 
in one of his drunken orgies, calls on Vashti, his 
queen, to come into the presence of the court and 
exhibit her beauty to the courtiers. To ask a 
woman to come into such a presence at any time 
would be to insult her ; to ask her to come unveiled 
into such a company in ancient Persia was to offer 
too gross an insult to be endured. With womanly 
courage, Vashti refuses to go. The king instantly 
deposes her ; but, when the fumes of the orgy have 
passed away, awakes to regret his sudden action, 
and his courtiers awake to the necessity of finding 
some way of pacifying his anger, or it would turn 
against them. They propose to send out courtiers, 
gather all the beautiful women of his kingdom, 
select the handsomest, and put her in Vashti's 
place. The scheme approves itself to this volup- 
tuous, self-willed, capricious monarch. A Jew, a 
Pharisee of the strictest sort, is an attendant in 
some capacity upon this court, and brings his niece, 
Hadassah or Esther, to compete for the dangerous 
honor. It seems strange that any guardian should 
offer his ward for a place in the harem of such a 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 185 

king, but we must remember that honored women 
sought the hand of Henry VIII., though they took 
the place which he had made vacant by bloody 
decrees. Mordecai succeeds. Esther enters the 
king's harem and becomes his favorite. So the 
first act ends. 

In the second act Haman appears upon the scene, 
— cold, shrewd, deliberate, cunning, the villain of 
the drama. He has climbed his way to the side 
of the throne, and all other courtiers bow and show 
him honor: all but one. In the universal adula- 
tion paid to Haman, Mordecai alone remains scorn- 
fully erect. Kace animosity inflames the personal 
hostility between these two. The Jew despises the 
cunning but treacherous Amalekite ; the Amalekite 
hates the rigorous virtue and inflexible pride of the 
Jew. It is the Cavalier against the Puritan ; the 
Jesuit against the Huguenot. Haman awaits his 
time and nurses his wrath. Patience in passion is 
the very climax of wickedness. To such patience 
Haman attained. Nor is it enough for him to have 
personal revenge on his personal enemy. Hating 
the Jew with all the concentrated hate for an alien 
race, he resolves that the race shall pay the penalty 
for the slight that has been put upon him. The 
Jews were then, as now, a thrifty people. Haman 
calculates that their extermination and the confis- 
cation of their estates would put into the royal 
treasury over ten million dollars. He proposes the 
scheme to Xerxes, is so confident of the result that 
he is willing to pay the sum in advance out of his 



186 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

own coiffers, and finds a readier acceptance of his 
offer from the king because the royal funds are ex- 
hausted by excessive luxury and dissipation. With 
the capriciousness of a despot, he takes from his 
finger the seal ring which serves as a signature and 
gives it to Haman. " Do with them," said he, " as 
it seemeth good unto thee." The decree is issued 
accordingly. It provides for the extermination of 
all the Jews within Xerxes's dominion, is posted 
in the palace, is sent out by courtiers to every 
province, and Haman and the king sit down to 
ratify it in a drinking bout. Mourning is not 
allowed in the palace. Letters are not delivered 
in the harem ; newspapers do not exist. Esther 
knows not the peril that threatens her people until 
she sees sackcloth on Mordecai, and sends a mes- 
senger to bid him take it off. So communication 
is opened between the uncle and the niece. He 
sends her the news, and calls for her intervention. 
Perhaps she remembers what came upon Pythias 
when he offered remonstrance ; perhaps she remem- 
bers that the engineers were beheaded because the 
storm broke their pontoon bridge. Sadly she re- 
calls to herself the fact that she is no longer the 
king's favorite. " For thirty days I have not been 
invited to meet the king," she says ; " and I can do 
nothing." Mordecai' s reply, such as a Cromwell 
might have given to his daughter, interprets his 
strenuous character. " Think not with thyseK that 
thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all 
the Jews. For if thou altogether boldest thy peace 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 187 

at this time, then shall there enlargement and de- 
liverance arise to the Jews from another place; but 
thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed ; and 
who knoweth whether thou art come to the king- 
dom for such a time as this ? " The niece yields 
to the strong influence of her adopted father. She 
resolves to make the effort, though with but little 
hope of its success. With dignity she says, " If I 
perish, I perish." ^ So the second act ends, with 
three days for prayer and fasting by her and her 
maidens, for her by the people of her race. 

The third act opens in the king's apartment. 
The queen, understanding the king's weaknesses, 
has prepared a banquet of wine for him. She has 
attired herself with unusual care, making the most 
of her extraordinary beauty. Then she crosses 
the threshold of the harem, traverses the hall that 
separates it from the court of the king's house, 
pushes her way through the throng of surprised 
courtiers and attendants, and stands at the door of 
the throne-room, waiting, with what beating heart 
we may guess, the signal that should give life and 
hope to her nation or decree both death to it 
and to her. The moment is auspicious. The king 
holds out his sceptre in signal of favor. She draws 
near, touches it, and prefers her request. Will the 
king honor her with his presence at her banquet of 
wine, and will he bring his favorite minister Haman 
with him ? The invitation is accepted. The king 
and the courtier sit down at the banquet of wine. 
1 Esther iv. 14, 16. 



188 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Pressed by the king to present her petition, she 
holds back her request for another day. " What 
wilt thou have," asks the king ; " it is granted, and 
that before thou askest it." " Only this, my lord," 
she replies, "that you and Haman will come to 
a greater feast to-morrow ; then I will tell you." 
His curiosity is piqued, his interest is aroused. 
Perhaps that was the reason why that night he 
could not sleep, and sent for some one to read him 
the court records to put him to sleep. What better 
nightcap, as Thackeray calls it, than court records 
could be devised ? But in this case it fails of its 
purpose, for in these records the king finds it re- 
corded how not long ago two men had devised to 
assassinate him, and one Mordecai had discovered 
the plot and saved his life. " What has been done 
for this Mordecai ? " he asks the reader. " No- 
thing." "Well, something must be done." With 
that he falls to sleep. Meanwhile Haman, elated by 
the honor conferred upon him, goes home, envied 
by all his fellows save only Mordecai, who, erect 
as ever and meeting the fiery glance of hate that 
leaps from Haman's eyes with scorn invincible, 
adds fresh fuel to that hate. He cannot wait for 
the execution of the general decree ; he will ask for 
Mordecai's execution to-morrow. Before he goes 
to his bed he gives orders for the erection of the 
gallows. So the third act ends, Haman preparing 
for the execution of Mordecai, the king planning 
how to honor him. 

The fourth act opens the next morning with 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 189 

Haman early at the palace. He is greeted as lie 
enters with the king's question, " What shall the 
king do to him whom he delighteth to honor ? " 
Haman thinks to himself, Who is it the king so 
delights to honor as myself ? So he prescribes for 
himself what his vanity desires. " Put him on the 
king's horse, put the king's robe upon him, put 
the king's crown on his head, and let some great 
prince lead the horse through the streets, crying 
everywhere, ' Thus doth the king to him whom he 
delights to honor. ' " " Well said, wise counselor," 
responds the king. " Who is so great a prince as 
yourself? Put Mordecai on my horse, and lead 
him through the streets, proclaiming to all the 
people as thou hast said." There is no room for 
objection, question, hesitation, or delay. With 
what bitter malice at his heart Haman fulfills this 
charge we are left to imagine. Then he goes 
home and tells his wife and friends. His obsequi- 
ous followers drop away from him ; even his wife 
warns him of impending disaster. While they 
are talking come the king's chamberlains to hasten 
Haman to the banquet which the queen has pro- 
vided for him. Then all is not lost. Still he has 
a place in the royal favor, and to the queen's ban- 
quet he goes, encouraging his heart with this hope 
against hope. 

So the last scene opens, with Haman, the king, 
and the queen at the banquet table together. 
Again the king repeats his question, " What is 
thy petition, Queen Esther, and it shall be granted 



190 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

thee ? and what is thy request, and it shall be per- 
formed, to half of the kingdom ? " Then she flings 
herself at his feet, with all the pent-up anguish 
of her woman's heart : " My lord the king, let my 
life be given me at my petition, and my people at 
my request, for we are sold, I and my people, to 
be destroyed utterly." The king, who has forgot- 
ten his careless gift of the Jewish people, the ring, 
the seal, and the decree, responds, " Who has 
dared to do this ? " Then with flashing eye she 
turns on Haman. " The adversary's name is this 
wicked Haman." And the king in his wrath rises 
and goes out ; and Haman flings himself on her 
couch to implore her mercy ; and the king com- 
ing back and looking on him there cries, " Will 
he insult the queen in my very presence ! " and the 
courtiers, who had been obsequious to Haman in 
his power, come in rejoicing in his fall, to hasten 
his doom. " He has erected just outside the gate a 
gallows for Mordecai," says one of them. " Hang 
him thereon," replies the king. So they hang Ha- 
man on the gallows that he had prepared for 
Mordecai. One would think that a decree should 
have gone out for the protection of the Jews. 
Whether the narrator thought it more dramatic to 
give a different ending, or whether it was really 
true that a decree once issued could not be re- 
called, I will not attempt to determine ; but, ac- 
cording to the story, a new decree is issued that 
the Jews may defend themselves against their ene- 
mies, and in the battles that ensued seventy-five 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 191 

thousand of the enemies of the Jews are slain ; and 
so the story ends. 

One has, it seems to me, but to read this story 
to feel the life of a romance in it.^ The contrasted 
characters — the sensual monarch, the unscrupu- 
lous minister, the proud Puritan, the brave woman, 
brave with true womanly courage — are drawn in 
few lines, but with marvelous skill. The plot, with 
its play of character against character, its rapidity 
of movement, its dramatic incident, its plotting 
and counter-plotting, shows the highest constructive 
skill ; and the moral inspiration of the story, incit- 
ing to hate of the sensuality of Xerxes and the 
crafty malice of Haman, to admiration for the 
courage of Mordecai, and a love that is more than 
admiration for the womanly bearing of the queen, 
is all the greater because the narrator does not 
formulate it; and the story is all the more reli- 
gious in its spirit because it is so wholly free from 
the phraseology of religion in its language.^ 

He who regards the Book of Esther as scien- 
tific history must explain as best he can how the 

^ This aspect of the book is recognized by commentatoTS, who 
treat it rather as history than as fiction, e. g., J. W. Haley : " Much 
of the fascination of the book is due to the skillful arrangement 
of parts. There is all the effect which we are accustomed to as- 
cribe to the elaborate weaving of a plot in drama, or in a work of 
fiction, and we find a well devised denouement. Every thread and 
fibre is wrought into its place in the fabric, and there is nothing 
irrelevant." The Booh of Esther. A New Translation with Notes, 
etc., by John W. Haley, M. A. 

2 It is the only book in the Bible in which the name of God 
does not appear. 



192 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

historian obtained his knowledge of the facts in 
the minute detail with which he records them. Who 
was present to hear the conference between Haman 
and Ahasuerus ; the colloquy between the king and 
the queen in the first banquet; the conversation 
between Haman and his wife ; the question of the 
king to the king's chamberlains ; the conversation 
between Haman and the king; and the plea of 
Esther for the life of herself and her people ?i It 
is very probable, indeed almost certain, that the 
story has an historical basis, but it is equally certain 
from the very structure of the narrative itself that 
the story has been told with the freedom of the 
romancer, who was using the material for literary 
and moral effect, not for a scientific purpose. 

A fifth type of fiction, Satirical Eomance, is 
afforded by the Book of Jonah. Of this book 
there are three interpretations : first, that it is his- 
tory, and all the events took place exactly as nar- 
rated; secondly, that it is allegory, that Jonah 
represents the Jewish people, the fish the heathen 
lands, the capture of Jonah by the fish the cap- 
tivity, the vomiting of Jonah out upon the land 
again the return from captivity; third, that it is a 
satirical romance, written for the purpose of satiriz- 
ing the narrowness of the Jewish religion, and 
teaching the wideness of God's love.^ This latter 

1 Est. iii. 8-11 ; V. 6-8, 14; yi. 3, 7-10; yii. 8-6. 

2 For the first or historical view, which is the more ancient and 
traditional, the student is referred to Dr. William Smith's Bible 
Dictionary, article Jonah, especially to the supplemental article 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 193 

I believe to be the true interpretation, and the one 
which I assume to be true in telling and interpret- 
by Dr. Calvin E. Stowe ; to the Introduction to the Book of 
Jonah in the Commentary on the Minor Prophets, by Dr. E. B. 
Pusey ; and to the Preface to the Book of Jonah in the Commen- 
tary on the Minor Prophets, by Dr. E. Henderson ; and to a mono- 
graph in pamphlet, Light on the Story of Jonah, by Dr. Henry 
Clay Trumbull, 1894. This view, however, it must be recognized, 
has been questioned from the very earliest ages ; thus Josephus 
prefaces and closes his account of the strange experiences of the 
prophet in a way clearly to indicate his doubt of its historicity : 
" I cannot," he says, " but think it necessary for me, who have 
promised to give an accurate account of our affairs, to describe 
the actions of this prophet so far as I have found them written 
down in the Hebrew books." Antiquities of the Jews, book ix., 
chapter x., § 2. For the second or parabolic view the reader is 
referred to The Book of the Twelve Prophets, by George Adam 
Smith, D. D. " Nor does this book," he says, " written so many 
centuries after Jonah had passed away, claim to be real history. On 
the contrary, it offers to us all the marks of the parable or allegory." 
After indicating what these marks are, he adds, " The purpose of 
the parable, and it is patent from first to last, is to illustrate the 
mission of prophecy to the Gentiles, God's care for them, and their 
susceptibility to his word. More correctly, it is to enforce all 
this truth upon a prejudiced and thrice reluctant mind. . . . 
The writer had in view, not a Jewish party but Israel as a whole 
in their national reluctance to fulfill their Divine mission to the 
world. ... Of such a people Jonah is the type. Like them he 
flees from the duty God has laid upon him. Like them he is 
beyond his own land, cast for a set period into a living death, and 
like them rescued again only to exhibit once more upon his return 
an ill-will to believe that God had any fate for the heathen except 
destruction. According to this theory, then, Jonah's disappear- 
ance in the sea and the great fish, and his subsequent ejection 
upon dry land, symbolize the Exile of Israel and their restoration 
to Palestine." Pp. 498, 501, 502, 503. The third view, which 
regards the book as a romance, with a moral meaning, the view 
which differs in detail rather than in essence from the second, is 
thus stated by Ewald ; " This much is apparent from the style and 



194 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

ing the story here. Of the correctness of the 
interpretation the reader must form his own judg- 
ment on its bare presentation, without argument 
or defense. 

In the outset, however, we are confronted by the 
claim that Jesus Christ has solved this question for 
us by his reference to the Book of Jonah. There 
are two accounts of this reference, one in Luke, 
one in Matthew. They are as follows : — 

Matthew xii. 39, 40, 41. Luke xi. 29, 30, 32. 

But he answered and said And •when the people were 
unto them, An evil and adulter- gathered thick together, he be- 

character of the little book which now perpetuates the prophet's 
name, from the failing end of the story, and (which is the most 
decisive thing) from the true meaning of the whole book, namely, 
that the author beheld in the legendary material which was ready 
to his hand simply a given medium for presenting in an attractive 
form a prophetic truth which lived in his own heart." He com- 
pares the story of the prophet's adventure to the stories in the 
Arabiau Nights' Entertainments, a conunon form of Oriental fic- 
tion, and implies that it is analogous to them in its literary form, 
but differs from them in its moral significance. " The course 
of ancient Hebrew literature," he says, "is distinguished from 
that of the other ancient literatures, not as regards its form, but 
only as regards its subject-matter and its higher prophetic ten- 
dencies." Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament, by 
Dr. Georg H. A. von Ewald, vol. v. pp. 90, 92. Analogous to 
Dr. Ewald' s interpretation is that of Dr. Caverno, who says : 
" Whoever wrote Jonah meant satire on the prophets as Lowell 
meant satire on the politicians of the day of the Biglow Papers, 
only the strokes in Jonah are of lighter touch than even those of 
Lowell." A Narrow Ax in Biblical Criticism, by Rev. Charles 
Caverno, A. M., LL. D., p. 82. For a careful study of the Book 
of Jonah, and a careful consideration of its various aspects, see 
Jonah in Fact and Fancy, by the Rev. Edgar James Banks, 
M. A., Ph. D. 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 195 

ous generation seeketh after a gan to say, This is an evil gen- 
sign ; and there shall no sign be eration : they seek a sign ; and 
given to it, but the sign of the there shall no sign be given it, 
prophet Jonas : For as Jonas but the sign of Jonas the pro- 
was three days and three nights phet. For as Jonas was a sign 
in the whale's belly ; so shall unto the Ninevites, so shall also 
the Son of man be three days the Son of man be to this gen- 
and three nights in the heart of eration. The men of Nineveh 
the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment 
shall rise in judgment with this with this generation, and shall 
generation, and shall condemn condemn it : for they repented 
it : because they repented at the at the preaching of Jonas ; and, 
preaching of Jonas ; and, behold, behold, a greater than Jonas is 
a greater than Jonas is here. here. 



The reference to Jonah as being three days and 
three nights in the fish's belly is given only by 
Matthew, not by Luke. There are two reasons 
why the modern critic does not regard this as evi- 
dence that the Book of Jonah is history. In the 
first place, even if Christ used the words reported 
by Matthew, such use does not indicate that the 
book is historical. If a modern speaker, addressing 
an American audience, were to say, " As Ulysses 
sailed between Scylla and Charybdis," this would 
not indicate that he believed the story of Scylla 
and Charybdis to be historical. Incidental refer- 
ence to an ancient story does not indicate that the 
person who makes the reference vouches for its 
historical character. But, in the second place, the 
modern critic does not believe that Christ ever 
used the words, "As Jonah was three days and 
three nights in the whale's belly ; so shall the 'Son 
of man be three days and three nights in the heart 



196 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

of the earth." He thinks that these words are in- 
terpolated in Matthew's account, and do not belong 
with the words that Christ is uttering. The Phari- 
sees demanded a sign. Christ declares that they 
shall have no other sign than that of the prophet 
Jonah. Does he mean no other sign than the re- 
surrection — that is, the greatest of all signs? No. 
What he means is, the people of Nineveh had no 
miracle, for there is nothing to indicate that they 
ever heard of Jonah's strange adventure ; they re- 
pented at the mere preaching of Jonah, and Christ 
says that his generation has had the preaching of 
one greater than Jonah. Mr. Moulton, in his 
"Bible for English Eeaders," has indicated the 
true place of this phrase in Matthew, by putting it 
in his edition of the gospel in a footnote. The 
modern critic believes that this phrase was added 
by an early scribe, or possibly by Matthew himself, 
as his interpretation of Jesus' words; the reader 
must remember that in those days there was no way 
to add such an interpretation other than by incor- 
porating it in the text. That this was not Jesus' 
meaning is further indicated by the fact that the 
parallel is not a true one. Jesus was not three 
days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 
He was buried on Friday ; he rose from the tomb 
on Sunday : he was in the earth one day and two 
nights. Whether the story is history or fiction is 
not determined, therefore, by this reference to it in 
the Gospels. It is to be determined by the struc- 
ture of the story itself. What is the story ? 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 197 

A prophet is called upon by God to' preach to a 
pagan city. He refuses. He does not believe in 
the heathen ; he does not care for the heathen ; he 
does not think religion is intended for the heathen ; 
he refuses to accept the commission. He attempts 
to fly from Jehovah by fleeing from the province 
of Palestine, over which alone, according to his 
narrow conception, Jehovah has jurisdiction ; gets 
into a ship going to Tarshish, and as soon as the 
ship is fairly out to sea goes to bed and goes to 
sleep, thinking himself safe. But Jehovah is God of 
the sea as well as of the land ; he sends out a great 
wind into the sea ; the prophet is presently awak- 
ened and summoned to the deck, and there is called 
on to join with the worshipers of other gods in a 
prayer-meeting in which each one invokes his own 
god for protection. So he learns his first lesson, 
that those whom he thought pariahs and outcasts 
have also some faith in the divine. The storm 
continues ; the sailors cast lots to ascertain who is 
culpable ; the lot falls upon the prophet ; he tells 
his tale and bids them cast him into the sea. This 
they are unwilling to do, and, ceasing their prayers 
to their various gods, they row hard to bring the 
boat to land, but all in vain. Thus he learns his 
second lesson : the heathen whom he thought pari- 
ahs and outcasts, for whom he cared nothing, are 
humane and care for him. At last they throw him 
overboard, yielding to his entreaty and compelled 
by the peril which threatens to engulf them all. 
The storm ceases, and a great fish which Jehovah 



198 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

has prepared swallows up the prophet.^ In the 
belly of the fish he proceeds to compose a poem, 
which, when we study it, we find is made up of 
reminiscences of an ancient psalm.^ Then Jehovah 
speaks to the great fish, and the great fish hears 
and obeys and vomits the prophet out upon the dry 
land. 

One would have thought that this would have 
been enough to take the narrowness out of the pro- 
phet, but it did not. It is difficult to get narrow- 
ness out of a narrow ecclesiastic. Jehovah again 
directs him to go to Nineveh, and he goes, though 
with unmistakable reluctance. So great is the city 
that it takes three days to walk from one gate to 
the other through the centre. He enters the city 
and begins his mission. He has gone but one day's 
journey, that is, one-third way through the city, 
when the whole people of the city accept the mes- 
sage, proclaim a fast, put on sackcloth from the 
greatest even to the least of them, and are com- 
manded by the king to turn every one from his evil 
way in hope that God will repent and turn from the 
fierceness of his anger. So great a result from a 
single day's preaching was never heard of before 
or since in the history of the race. What is very 
curious, the history of Israel gives no record of any 

^ There is no reason to call it a whale ; it is not called ^vhale 
either in the Old or the New Testament ; the word, in the New 
Testament rendered whale simply means great fish. According 
to the narrative, Jehovah prepares a special fish to swallow him, 
and the fish does what it has been made to do. 

^ Psalm Ixxxviii. 5-8. 



SOME HEBREW STORIES RETOLD 199 

such revival among tlie Ninevites, and tlie history 
of Nineveh contains no suggestion of it. God ac- 
cepts the penitence of the city, repents him of the 
evil that he had said that he would do, and does it 
not, and the prophet is rejoiced ? No ! He is very 
angry ; he expostulates. " Was not this," he says 
to Jehovah, "my saying when I was in my own 
country ? That was the reason I fled beforehand 
into Tarshish, because I knew that thou art a God 
gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great 
kindness, and repentest thou of the evil." ^ I knew 
— that is, this is the effect of his expostulation — 
that if I came here and preached, God would not 
do what I told them He would do, and I should be 
left in the position of a false prophet. So he goes 
out from the city, builds him a little hut, and sits 
down there to see what will happen. God prepares 
a gourd that serves him as a shield from the sun, 
and Jonah is glad because of the gourd. Then 
God prepares a worm to smite the gourd, and it 
withers, and God prepares a vehement east wind 
and a hot sun to beat upon the head of Jonah, 
and in his misery he wishes for death. Then God 
expostulates : " Dost thou well to be angry for the 
gourd ? " and the sulky prophet replies, " I do well 
to be angry." Jehovah patiently continues his ex- 
postulations : " Thou hast had pity on the gourd, 
for the which thou hast not labored, and should not 
I have pity on Nineveh, wherein are more than six- 
score thousand persons that cannot discern between 

1 Jonah iv. 2. 



200 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

their left hand and their right hand, and also much 
cattle?"^ But he gets no answer. And so the 
story ends — Jonah left sulky and cross like a 
petulant child in the hot sun outside the walls of 
Nineveh, angry because God is merciful. The 
meaning of the story seems to me to be writ in 
large and luminous characters : " There is a wide- 
ness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea." 
When, from that splendid truth, brought out more 
clearly in the story of Jonah than in any other 
book of the Old Testament, we turn aside to dis- 
cuss the question whether a whale has a throat big 
enough for a man to pass through, we are abandon- 
ing the great lesson which God meant to teach 
through our imagination to debate a physiological 
fact of absolutely no consequence. 

1 Jonah iv. 9-11. 



CHAPTER IX 

A DRAMA OF LOVE^ 

Literature is an interpretation of life. The 
interpreter may expound in a philosophical manner 

^ There are three conceptions of the Song of Songs ; the first 
regards it as an allegory of the spiritual union between the soul 
and God or between Christ and his Church. This mystical view 
finds, perhaps, its best interpreter ia Mme. Guyon. One or two 
quotations from her will serve to illustrate the spirit of this 
method of interpretation : " Chapter i. verse 1, ' Let him kiss me 
with the kisses of his mouth.'' This kiss, which the soul desires of 
its God, is essential union, or a real, permanent, and lasting pos- 
session of its divine object. It is the spiiitual marriage." . . . 
" Verse 4, ' I am black hut comely, ye daughters of Jerusalem, as 
the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.^ . . . What is this 
thy blackness, thou incomparable maiden ? (we say to her) tell 
us, we pray thee. I am black, she says, because I perceive by the 
light of my divine Sun, hosts of defects, of which I was never 
aware until now ; I am black, because I am not yet cleansed from 
self. . . . Verse 1, ' I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by 
the roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake 
my love till she please.'' The soul is in a mystic slumber in this em- 
brace of betrothal, in which she enjoys a sacred rest she had never 
before experienced. . . . The daughters of Jerusalem are loving and 
meddlesome souls, who are anxious to wake her, though under 
the most specious pretexts ; but she is so soundly asleep that she 
cannot be aroused. . . . Verse 9, ' King Solomon made himself a 
chariot of the wood of Lebanon.' The Son of God, the King of 
Glory, made himself a chariot of his Humanity, to which he be- 
came united in the Incarnation, intending to be seated upon it to 
all eternity, and to make of it a triumphal car, upon which he will 



202 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

the laws of life, illustrating them more or less by 
pictures produced by his imagination or by inci- 

ride with pomp and splendor in the sight of all his creatures." The 
Song of Songs of Solomon, with ^Explanations and Reflections hav- 
ing Beference to the Interior Life, by Madame Guyon, pp. 23, 33, 51, 
66. — The second view regards the book as a collection of love 
songs exchanged between two lovers, Solomon and the Shulamite 
maiden ; or even a collection of entirely independent songs, the 
only unity being their common theme, Love. It has even been 
suggested that the poem was written to celebrate the nuptials 
between Solomon and the daughter of Pharaoh. This, which is 
the traditional view, is adopted by Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, Keil, 
Kingsbury, and Professor Moulton. The English reader will 
most readily find it and the arguments in support of it in The 
Bible Commentary, and in the Modern Reader'' s Bible. In the 
latter this view is thus stated by Professor Moulton: "King 
Solomon with a courtly retinue, visiting the royal vineyards upon 
Mount Lebanon, comes by stirprise upon the fair Shulamite. She 
flies from them. Solomon visits her in the disguise of a shepherd, 
and so wins her love. He then comes in all his royal state, and 
calls upon her to leave Lebanon and become his queen. They 
are in the act of being wedded in the royal palace when the poem 
opens. This, which is the story as a whole, is brought out for us 
in seven idyls, each independent, all founded on the one story, but 
making their reference to different parts of it as these occur to 
the minds of the speakers, without the limitation to order of suc- 
cession that would be implied in dramatic presentation." Modern 
Reader^s Bible, Biblical Idyls, Intro, p. xi. — The third view, the 
one adopted in this chapter, regards the book as a drama in which 
there are three principal characters : Solomon, the Shulamite 
maiden, and her shepherd lover. This view is thus summarized 
by Dr. Driver : *' A beautiful Shulamite maiden, surprised by the 
king and his train on a royal progress in the north (vi. 11, 12), 
has been brought to the palace at Jerusalem (i. 4, etc.), where 
the king hopes to win her affections, and to induce her to exchange 
her rustic home for the honor and enjoyments which a court life 
could afford. She has, however, already pledged her heart to a 
young shepherd, and the admiration and blandishments which 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 203 

dents from history or from other authors ; he may 
portray life in action and accompany the portrayal 
with some description and interpretation ; he may 
simply create the characters and place them in the 
situations which he has invented for them, and 
leave them to interpret themselves by their speech 
and their actions. The first form of literature is 
Essay, the second is Novel, the third is Drama. 
Emerson elucidates the nature of heroism thus: 
"Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the 

the king lavishes upon her are powerless to make her forget him. 
In the end she is permitted to return to her mountain home, 
where, at the close of the poem, the lovers appear hand in hand 
(viii. 5), and express, in warm and glowing words, the superiority 
of genuine, spontaneous affection over that which may he pur- 
chased by wealth or rank (viii. 6, 7)." An Introduction to the 
Literature of the Old Testament, 6th edition, by S. R. Driver, D. D., 
pp. 437, 438. I agree with Dr. Driver that an attentive study of 
the poem can leave little doubt that the modern view {i. e., the 
dramatic) is decidedly more probable than the traditional view 
{i. e., the lyrical). For the reasons which lead to this conclusion, 
except as they are apparent in the dramatic version of the Song 
here given, the reader is referred to Dr. Driver's Introduction; 
and for a fuller explanation of this dramatic renderinar of the 
book he is recommended to consult The Lily Among Thorns, by 
William Elliot Griffis, D. D., to whom I gladly acknowledge my 
indebtedness in the preparation of this chapter. A special trans- 
lation and dramatic arrangement can be found in the interesting 
monograph on the Song of Songs, by the Rev. William C. Daland 
(Leonardsville, N. Y.). They both follow the previous work along 
the same line by Ewald, whose analysis of the poem is given by 
Driver in his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. 
It may be added that the date and authorship of the Song of 
Songs are both uncertain ; it is quite clear that Solomon is not the 
author ; " The Song of Solomon " must be taken to mean a Song 
about Solomon, not a song by him. 



204 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects 
are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and 
the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil 
agents." ^ Thackeray, in " The Newcomes," gives 
us no definition of heroism, but in Colonel Newcome 
he paints the picture of a hero. We see, however, 
not only the portrait, but the artist at his work 
painting it. We know what he thinks of his sitter, 
for he tells us very frankly : " With that fidelity 
which was an instinct of his nature, this brave man 
thought ever of his absent child and longed after 
him. He never forsook the native servants and 
nurses who had charge of the child, but endowed 
them with money sufficient fand little was wanted 
by the people of that frugal race) to make all 
their future lives comfortable. No friends went 
to Europe, no ship departed, but Newcome sent 
presents and remembrances to the boy and thanks 
to all who were kind to his son." ^ Here the hero 
is seen, but seen through the eyes of the artist 
who is painting his hero's portrait. In ''Clive" 
Browning portrays a hero, but says no word of 
eulogy or criticism. He simply bids you look and 
see dive's deed; summons you, as a bystander 
might, to the door of the club-room to see the 
scene : — 

" Twice the muzzle touched my forehead. Heavy barrel, flurried 
wrist, 

1 Essays, by Ealph Waldo Emerson, Heroism. 

2 The Newcomes, chap. v. 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 205 

Either spoils a steady lifting-. Thrice: then, 'Laugh at Hell 

who list, 
I can't ! God 's no fable either. Did this boy's eye -wink once ? 

No! 
There 's no standing him and HeU and God, all three against me 

— so 
I did cheat ! ' 

And down he threw the pistol." ^ 

In the Essay the principle is elucidated ; in the 
Novel it is illustrated ; in the Drama it is simply 
portrayed. In the Essay the author interprets ; in 
the Novel he portrays and interprets ; in the Drama 
his portrayal is left to be self -interpretative. This 
self-interpretative nature of the drama is one of 
the characteristics which fit it for presentation on 
the stage, but by no means the only one. The 
drama may be a story so constructed that it can 
be told " by actual representation of persons by 
persons, with imitation of language, voice, gesture, 
dress, and accessories or surrounding conditions ; " ^ 
but this is by no means essential. Browning's 
" Ring and the Book," which could by no possi- 
bility be acted on the stage, is as truly a drama 
as is " Hamlet " or " Faust." The real distinction 
between the dramatic and the epic poem is well 
defined by Boucicault : " In the epic poem there is 
only one speaker — the poet himself. The action 
is bygone. The scene is described. The persons 
are spoken of as third persons. There are only 

1 Dramatic Idylls, " Clive," Browning's Works, Riverside Edi- 
tion, vol. vi. p. 160. 

2 Century Dictionary. 



206 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

two concerned in it, the poet and the reader. In 
the drama the action is present, the scene is visi- 
ble, the persons are speakers, the sentiments and 
passions are theirs." ^ 

It is in this sense that the " Song of Songs " is a 
drama. It is a portrayal of woman's love resisting 
the enticements of ambition. In it there are three 
characters : a Shulamite ^ maiden ; her peasant 
lover, to whom she is betrothed, and to whose love 
she remains faithful under strong temptations to 
abandon him for a supreme place at the court 
of King Solomon, as the head of his harem ; and 
Solomon himself. There is also a chorus of women 
attached to the court, who lend their influences in 
cooperation with the endeavors of the king to win 
the maiden from her betrothed. No moral is 
drawn ; no characterizations are furnished ; no in- 
terpretation is afforded ; the poet is unseen ; an 
invisible artist summons us to look on while the 
royal lover endeavors by every blandishment to win 
the peasant girl; we are invited to listen to her 
replies, to witness even her night-dreams, and to 
see at last the victory which her love, never for a 
moment vacillating, wins for her and for woman. 
In studying this book there are three considerations 
which must be constantly in the mind of the stu- 
dent. 

I. This is a drama only in the largest sense of 
that word : it was not probably composed to be 

^ Quoted in Century Dictionary under Drama. 

2 Chap. vi. 13 ; a form of Shunammite, a native of Shunem (Shulem). 



A BEAM A OF LOVE 207 

enacted on a stage, and is not adapted for that 
purpose, though it might lend itself to performance 
as a musical interlude, with the simplest scenic 
effects, or with none at all. There are clearly dif- 
ferent songs to be sung by different singers, some 
male, some female; but these songs are not as- 
signed by the author to their respective characters. 
Except King Solomon, no personage is named. 
There are no stage directions ; and except in the 
account of Solomon's entrance into Jerusalem no 
scenic descriptions. There is no conversation ; no- 
thing that can properly be called a dialogue.^ The 
interplay of thought and emotion is effected by the 
contrast between monologues. The Song of Songs 
is indeed rather a cycle of dramatic love songs 
than a drama in the modern sense of the word. It 
resembles an oratorio rather than an opera, though 
it cannot properly be said to resemble either ; ex- 
cept that, as in the oratorio, the scenery, the occa- 
sion, the distinctive character of the three principal 
personages are all left to the imagination of the 
auditor. It is for this reason the commentators have 
differed so widely in their interpretation : that 
some have conceived that there are but two charac- 
ters, others that there are three ; that some sup- 

1 The dramatic critics generally introduce a dialogne element 
in chap, i., where they represent the Shulamite's song, depreciating 
her beauty, as interpreted by the chorus with the words " but 
comely," and in chap, iii., which they conceive to be a dialogue 
between different citizens commenting on the splendor of the royal 
procession. This appears to me too modem and artificial to be a 
probable interpretation of the design of the author. 



208 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

pose the description of Solomon in Jerusalem^ 
to be furnished dramatically by a trio representing 
different citizens, others regard it as a piece of 
description furnished by the poet himself and to 
be interpreted either by a kind of Greek chorus, 
or in recitative by an interpreter ; that some re- 
gard the duet in chapter iv. 8-v. 1 as represent- 
ing an ideal, others as representing a real, interview 
between the Shulamite and her peasant lover ; that 
in some instances the same song is attributed to 
different characters by different interpreters. In 
the interpretation of the Song of Songs given in 
this chapter I follow the dramatic interpreter ; but 
the reader must remember that it is impossible to 
give such an interpretation without modernizing 
and occidentalizing an ancient and Oriental song- 
cycle, and that in such an interpretation much 
necessarily depends upon the temper of the inter- 
preter.2 

II. The reader must also constantly bear in 
mind the difference between the language of im- 
agination and the language of symbolism. The 
language of imagination is framed for the purpose 

^ Song- of Songs, iii. 6-11. 

2 " In case some surprise should be felt at the amount which 
(upon either view) has, as it were, to be read between the lines, it 
may be pointed out that, if the poem is to be made intelligible, 
its different parts must, in one way or another, be assigned to 
different characters ; and as no names mark the beginning of the 
several speeches, these must be supplied, upon the basis of such 
clues as the poem contains, by the commentator." Driver'' s Intro- 
duction to the Literature of the Old Testament, sixth ed., p. 438. 



A BEAM A OF LOVE 209 

of calling up in the mind of the auditor or reader 
some image. It ought always to be possible to 
translate the figure of speech into a figure on canvas. 
It is intended to be a picture, and it is imperfect 
if it cannot be translated into a picture. But the 
language of symbolism is not intended to caU up 
in the mind of the auditor or reader a picture ; it 
cannot be translated into a figure on canvas ; it is 
not, and is not intended to be, pictorial. It uses 
things to represent ideas, much as in the earliest 
hieroglyphic writing things were used to represent 
ideas. When, for example, the Hebrew poet says 
God is a rock, he does not mean to call up in the 
mind of the reader the picture of a rock and com- 
pare God therewith ; he means to call up the idea 
of strength and stability ; he uses a concrete thing 
to represent an abstract idea. The language of 
these love songs is not the language of imagination, 
and they are not only despoiled of their meaning, 
but in some instances a grotesque meaning is im- 
ported into them, by reading them as though they 
were imaginative. They are symbolical. Thus 
when the maiden sings of her lover, " His aspect 
is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars," she does 
not mean to call up an image of the mountain or 
the trees; she means to call up the ideas of 
strength and beauty which they represent, and the 
emotions which they evoke : the sight of him 
would be exhilarating to her as would be the view 
of her beloved cedar-clad mountains in her rural 
home. So when Solomon, praising the maiden. 



210 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

sings to her, " Thy neck is like a tower of David 
builded for an armoury," he does not intend to call 
up an image of that tower, and trace a parallel be- 
tween the two ; he intends to call up the emotions 
which are aroused by the beauty and perfection 
of the finest piece of architecture in the city, and 
affirm that like emotions are evoked by the beauty 
and perfection of the maiden's neck and shoulders. 
Such symbolical use of language is not as common 
with us as it was with the ancient Hebrews, yet it 
is not uncommon. When we say of a person, " He 
has a sunny disposition," we do not wish to call up 
a reminiscence of the sunshine ; we use the sun- 
shine as a symbol, because the disposition we de- 
sire to describe produces on our spirits an effect 
something analogous to that produced by sunshine 
breaking through a cold, lowering, and gloomy 
day. The reader must resolutely get rid of the 
idea that the language of these love songs is 
the language of imagination. He must get from 
the symbol the idea or emotion it is calculated 
to produce and translate it into that idea or emo- 
tion. 

III. The reader must remember also, in reading 
this cycle of dramatic love songs, that they are dra- 
matic not didactic. The object of the essayist is 
to teach a lesson, the object of the dramatist is to 
produce an impression. The reader is not to look 
in this drama for a lesson taught ; he is to be re- 
ceptive to the impression intended to be produced. 
That impression is the spontaneity and the fidelity 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 211 

of love. It is expressed in the refrain " Stir not 
up nor awaken love until it please," and in the 
closing song ; " If a man would give all the sub- 
stance of his house for love, he would utterly be 
contemned." The reader must remember, too, that 
the dramatist describes life as he sees it, not as a 
moralist might idealize it ; that this dramatist is an 
Oriental and is writing for Oriental readers ; and 
that in the Orient love is warmer and more pas- 
sionate, and its expression is both cruder and more 
unreserved, than in the modern life of the West. 
In short, the reader must remember that the Song 
of Songs is not a sermon but a drama ; that in it 
the author, an Oriental, uses Oriental symbolism, 
in portraying Oriental life, for the purpose of pro- 
ducing an impression of the purity and the strength 
of woman's love. 

Bearing these considerations in mind let the 
reader turn to the Song of Songs itself, as it is 
here interpreted in a series of dramatic love songs, 
with occasional chorus.^ The scene opens in North- 
ern Palestine, whither Solomon, with his court and 
his harem, has come upon a summer excursion. 
The listener to the love songs which follow must 
imagine for himself the scene : the royal encamp- 
ment, the white tents set out upon the plain, the 

^ In this interpretative rendering of tMs cycle of dramatic love 
songs, I follow tlie Revised Version, sometimes adopting the 
marginal reading, and in one or two instances varying the trans- 
lation on the authority of eminent scholars, to make the meaning 
dearer. 



212 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

royal tent in the centre, the military bands, the 
court officers, the ladies of the harem in their 
gorgeous apparel. In the midst of them is a sun- 
burned peasant girl, with that fresh beauty which 
appears all the more striking in contrast with the 
formal and artificial and somewhat worn beauties 
of the women who make up the Oriental court. 
The women of the harem m solos and chorus 
glorify the king; the Shulamite maiden depre- 
ciates her beauty, which is her peril, yet cannot resist 
the temptation coyly to qualify her self-deprecia- 
tion. 

CHORUS WITH solos: COURT "WOMEN AND THE SHULAMITE.^ 

Chorus. " Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth ; 
For thy love is better than wine. 
Thine ointments have a goodly fragrance ; 
Thy name is as ointment poured forth ; 
Therefore do the maidens love thee. 
Draw me ; we will run after thee : 
The king hath brought me into his chambers : 
"We will be glad and rejoice in thee, 
We will make mention of thy love more than of wine : 
Rightly do they love thee. 

Shulamite. " I am black — but comely — 
O ye daughters of Jerusalem, 
As the tents of Kedar, 
As the curtains of Solomon. 
Look not upon me, because I am swarthy, 
Because the sun hath scorched me. 
My mother's sons were incensed against me, 
They made me keeper of the vineyards ; 
But mine own vineyard have I not kept." 

1 Chap. i. 2-8. 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 213 

Then she turns from the women of the court 
and addresses herself, in imagination, to her absent 
lover. 

*' Tell me, thou whom my soul loveth, 

Where thou f eedest thy flock, where thou makest it to rest at noon : 

For why should I be as one that wandereth 

Beside the flocks of thy companions ? 

Chorus (satirically). " If thou know not, thou fairest among 
women. 
Go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, 
And feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents." 

Solomon enters and prefers his suit in person. 
Then follows a duet between the two : he promises 
her jewels, she longs for her lover ; he flatters her 
beauty, she recalls her peasant home ; he promises 
her a dwelling-place in a palace of cedar, she replies 
that she is but a lily of the valley ; he answers that 
such a lily in such peasant and poor surroundings 
is as a lily among thorns, she responds with remi- 
niscences of the simple joys of her village life and 
her village lover. 

duo: SOLOMON AND THE SHTJLAMITE.l 

Solomon. " I have compared thee, my love. 
To a steed in Pharaoh's chariots. 
Thy cheeks are comely with plaits of hair. 
Thy neck with strings of jewels. 
We will make thee plaits of gold 
With studs of silver. 

Shulamite. " While the king sat at his table. 
My spikenard sent forth its fragrance. 
My beloved is unto me as a bundle of myrrh, 
That lieth betwixt my breasts. 
My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna-flowers 
In the vineyards of En-gedi. 

1 Chap. i. 9-ii. 7. 



214 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Solomon. " Behold, thou art fair, my love ; behold, thou art fair ; 
Thou hast doves' eyes. 

Shulamite (recalling her lover). " Behold, thou art fair, my 
beloved, yea pleasant : 
Also our couch is green. 

Solomon. " The beams of our house are cedars. 
And our rafters are firs. 

Shulamite. " I am a rose of Sharon, 
A lily of the valleys. 

Solomon. " As a lily among thorns. 
So is my love among the daughters. 

Shulamite. " As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, 
So is my beloved among the sons. 
I sat down under his shadow with great delight, 
And his fruit was sweet to my taste. 
He brought me to the banqueting house, 
And his banner over me was love. 

Stay ye me with cakes of raisins, comfort me with apples : 
For I am sick with love. 
Let his left hand be under my head, 
And his right hand embrace me. 
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, 
By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, 
That ye stir not up, nor awaken love, 
Until it please." 

Love is spontaneous ; love springs up of itself. 
Jewels cannot buy it, gold cannot purchase it, 
ambition cannot arouse it, courtly offers cannot 
win it. "I adjure you that you try not to stir or 
awaken love." It springs spontaneously or not at 
all. Then follows a reminiscent song, in which the 
Shulamite, as in a day-dream, sees her lover coming 
to her, and hears his love song at her latticed win- 
dow, and imagines herself replying to him with a 
familiar verse from their shepherd life : " Take us 
the foxes, the little foxes." 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 215 



duo: the SHULAMITB and the peasant LOVER.l 

Shulamite. " The voice of my beloved ! behold, he cometh, 
Leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. 
My beloved is like a roe or a young hart : 
Behold, he standeth behind our wall, 
He looketh in at the windows, 
He sheweth himself through the lattice. 
My beloved spake, and said unto me : 
Lover's Song. "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and ooma 

away. 
For, lo, the winter is past, 
The rain is over and gone ; 
The flowers appear on the earth ; 
The time of the singing of birds is come, 
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land ; 
The fig-tree ripeneth her green figs, 
And the vines are in blossom, 
They give forth their fragrance. 
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. 
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the 

steep place, 
Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice ; 
For sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. 

Shulamite's Song. " Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that 

spoil the vineyards ; 
For our vineyards are in blossom. 
My beloved is mine, and I am his : 
He feedeth his flock among the lilies. 
When the day breaks, and the shadows flee away, 
Turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart, 
Upon the mountains which separate us." ^ 

1 Chap. ii. 8-17. 

2 The verse is a reminiscence of a vinedresser's song ; and it 
intimates that her duties in the vineyard prevent her from imme- 
diately joining him. She imagines herself separated from his 
vineyard by some intervening hills, and begs him at the early 
dawn to climb over the mountains which separate them and come 
to her. All is in the realm of imagination. 



216 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

The scene clianges. Tlie King lias returned 
from Northern Palestine to Jerusalem, bringing 
the Shulamite maiden with him. He hopes that 
separation from her lover will cause her to forget 
her love. But in vain ; in her sleep she dreams of 
her lover ; dreams that she sought him in the city, 
found him, and brought him to her mother's house. 
The song of her dream ends with the distich we 
have already heard, " Stir not up, nor awaken love, 
until it please." 

SOLO : THE SHULAMITE.^ 

The Shulamite' s Dream. " By night on my bed I sought him 
whom my soul loveth : 
I sought him, but I found him not. 
I said, I will rise now, and go about the city, 
In the streets and in the broad ways, 
I will seek him whom my soul loveth : 
I sought him, but I found him not. 
The watchmen that go about the city found me : 
To whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth ? 
It was but a little that I passed from them, 
When I foimd him whom my soul loveth : 
I held him, and would not let him go. 
Until I had brought him into my mother's house, 
And into the chamber of her that conceived me. 
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, 
By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, 
That ye stir not up, nor awaken love, 
Until it please." 

To enhance the dramatic effect of the next scenej 
in which the King's appeal to the ambition of the 
Shulamite maiden is presented with all the elo- 

1 Chap. iii. 1-5. 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 217 

quence of whicli the royal suitor is capable, the 
poet acts the part of Greek Chorus and describes 
the King and the military procession which accom- 
panies him in the streets of the capital. 

SOLO OR CHORUS.^ 

Interpreter. " Who is this that eometh up out of the wilderness 
like pillars of smoke, 
Perfumed with myrrh and frankineense, 
With all powders of the merchant ? 
Behold, it is the litter of Solomon ; 
Threescore mighty men are ahout it, 
Of the mighty men of Israel. 
They all handle the sword, and are expert in war : 
Every man hath his sword upon his thigh, 
Because of fear in the night. 
King Solomon made himself a palanquin 
Of the wood of Lebanon. 
He made the pillars thereof of silver, 
The bottom thereof of gold, the seat of it of purple, 
The midst thereof being paved with love. 
From the daughters of Jerusalem. 

Go forth, ye daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon, 
With the crown wherewith his mother hath crowned him in the 

day of his espousals. 
And in the day of the gladness of his heart." ^ 

The King in this splendor of his city life renews 
his suit : see how he does it — foolish wise man — 
by flattery, not by love ; and woman's heart is won 

1 Chap. iii. 6-11. 

2 By Griffis and Daland, following Delitzsch and Ewald, this is 
broken up into responsive utterances by different citizens: one 
asks, Who is this that eometh up out of the wilderness, a second 
replies, Behold, it is the litter of Solomon, etc. This appears to 
me to impart a modern artificiality into the poem. See note on 
page 207, ante. 



218 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

by love, not by flattery. The response is a renewed 
protestation of ber devotion to ber peasant lover. 

duo: SOIiOMON AND THE SHULAMITE.^ 

Solomon. " Behold, thou art fair, my love ; behold, thou art fair ; 
Thou hast doves' eyes behind thy veil : ^ 
Thy hair is as a flock of goats, 
That lie along" the side of mount Gilead. 
Thy teeth are like a flock of ewes that are newly shorn, 
Which are come up from the washing ; 
Whereof every one hath twins, 
And none is bereaved among them. 
Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, 
And thy mouth is comely : 
Thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate 
Behind thy veil. 

Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, 
Whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, 
All the shields of the mighty men. 

Thy two breasts are like two fawns that are twins of a roe. 
Thou art all fair, my love ; and there is no spot in thee.* 

Sliulamite. " My beloved is mine and I am his, 
He feedeth his flock among the lilies. 
When the day breaks and the shadows flee away 
I will get me to the mountain of myrrh 
And to the bill of frankincense." * 

1 Chap. iv. 1-7. 

2 Compare chap. i. 15. She was not veiled in the country ; now 
that she has come up to Jerusalem and the palace she wears her 
veil. 

* This is all the language of symbolism, not of imagination. 
See page 208 fP. He praises the delicacy of her hair, the white- 
ness of her teeth, the purity of her complexion, the fine lines of 
her mouth, the perfect proportion of her neck and shoulders. 

* For reasons for this change in the text see Dr. Grifl3.s's The 
Lily Among Thorns, pp. 204-207. Verse 6 where it stands in 
the usual text makes a break in Solomon's song, which is out of 
character with the King, and the fact that it repeats the words of 
the Shulamite in chap. ii. 16, 17, affords a sufficient reason for 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 219 

All the scenic effects in this drama, it must be 
remembered, are left to the imagination of the 
auditors. Already the poet has portrayed the 
Shulamite imagining herseK at home, and her lover 
coming to her over the intervening hills, and his 
song and her reply ; and again as dreaming of him 
by night and of herself as seeking him in vain in 
the city of Jerusalem ; now again he portrays her 
day-dream of him interpreted by a duet between 
the two. She imagines him coming to her with his 
love song, full of the reminiscences of the country, 
— a song in spirit entirely different from that of her 
royal suitor's ; and she gives to this peasant lover's 
suit an answer very different from that which she 
has given to the king. "A garden spring art 
thou," she imagines him saying to her; and herself 
replying, " Let my lover come into his garden and 
eat his precious fruit." 

DUET : THE PEASANT LOVER AND THE SHULAMITE.^ 

The Peasant Lover. " Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, 
With me from Lebanon : 
Come from the top of Amana, 
From the top of Senir and Hermon, 
From the lions' dens, 
From the mountains of the leopards. 
Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my bride ; 
Thou hast ravished my heart with one look from thine eyes, 
With one chain of thy neck. 
How fair is thy love, my sister, my bride ! 
How much better is thy love than wine ! 

believing that it is here misplaced, and should be regarded as the 
maiden's reply to the royal suitor. 
1 Chap. iv. 8-v. 1. 



220 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

And the smell of thine ointments than all manner of spices ! 

Thy lips, O my bride, drop honey : 

Honey and milk are under thy tongue ; 

And the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. 

A garden barred is my sister, my bride ; 

A spring shut up, a foimtain sealed. 

Thy shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with precious fruits ; 

Henna with spikenard plants, 

Spikenard and saffron, 

Calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense ; 

Myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices. 

Thou art a fountain of gardens, 

A well of living waters. 

And flowing streams from Lebanon. 

The Shulamite. " Awake, north wind ; and come, thou south ; 
Blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. 
Let my beloved come into his garden. 
And eat his precious fruits. 

The Peasant Lover. " I am come into my garden, my sister, 
my bride : 
I have gathered my myrrh with my spice ; 
I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey ; 
I have drunk my wine with my milk. 
Eat, O friends ; 
Drink, yea, drink abundantly, beloved." ^ 

She who dreams of her peasant lover by day 
dreams of him also by night ; she recites the dream 
she had while she slept, but her heart kept awake 
with love, and thought of him who was absent, yet 
to her thoughts ever present. In this dream she 
is at first in her peasant home ; she hears his voice ; 
he has come dressed with care for his call; his 
hands are anointed with the myrrh, which even 

^ The Shulamite imagines that the anticipated wedding with 
her peasant lover has taken place, and he, rejoicing in winning 
her, his bride, invites the guests to join in the wedding festivities. 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 221 

the peasants used. She is reluctant to arise and 
soil her feet on the earthen floor ; when she does 
arise and takes hold of the latch her hands are 
covered with the myrrh — but he is gone. And 
when she goes out to seek him, lo ! she is a stranger 
in the strange city, unprotected and maltreated. 
The contradictions of the scene are just such as 
are common in dreams. 

SOLO AND chorus: THE SHULAMITE AND THE COURT WOMEN.^ 

The Shulamite's Second Dream. " I was asleep, but my heart - 
waked. 
It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, 

Lover. " Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled : 
For my head is filled with dew, 
My locks with the drops of the night. 

Shulamite. " I have put off my coat ; how shall I put it on ? 
I have washed my feet ; how shall I defile them ? 
My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, 
And my heart was moved within me. 
I rose up to open to my beloved ; 
And my hands dropped with myrrh, 
And my fingers with liquid myrrh, 
Upon the handles of the bolt. 
I opened to my beloved ; 

But my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone* 
My soul failed me when he spake : 
I sought him, but I could not find him ; 
I called him, but he gave me no answer. 
The watchmen that go about the city found me, 
They smote me, they wounded me ; 
The keepers of the walls took away my veil from me. 
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, 
That ye tell him, that I am sick with love." 

The women of the harem can see no reason why 

1 Chap. V. 2-vi. 3. 



222 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

the Shulamite should refuse the tempting offer of 
the king for the sake of her peasant lover. What 
is her beloved more than any other beloved ? Un- 
solved puzzle of all ages : why is one woman to one 
man more than all other women, and one man to 
one woman more than all other men ? She cannot 
tell ; they cannot tell ; no one can tell. But it 
always has been so since Eve was brought to Adam 
and they twain became one flesh. She tries to 
answer by giving a portrait of him. When did a 
lover's portrait ever seem true to other than the 
lover who painted it? In our estimate of this 
portrait we must remember that the language is 
not that of imagination, but that of Oriental sym- 
bolism.i 

Chorus of Women. " What is thy beloved more than another 
beloved, 
O thou fairest among women ? 
What is thy beloved more than another beloved, 
That thou dost so adjure us ? 

The Shulamite. " My beloved is white and ruddy. 
The chief est among ten thousand. 
His head is as the most fine gold, 
His locks are curling, and black as a raven. 
His eyes are like doves beside the water brooks ; 
Washed with milk, and fitly set. 

His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as banks of sweet herbs : 
His lips are as lilies, dropping liquid myrrh. 
His hands are as rings of gold set with beryl : 
His body is as ivory work overlaid with sapphires. 
His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold : 
His aspect is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. 
His mouth is most sweet : yea, he is altogether lovely. 

^ See ante, page 208 ff. 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 223 

This is -my beloved, and this is my friend, 
daughters of Jerusalem. 

Chorus (sarcastically). " Whither is thy beloved gone, 

thou fairest among women ? 
Whither hath thy beloved turned him, 
That we may seek him with thee ? 

Shulamite. " My beloved is gone down to his garden, to the 
beds of spices, 
To feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies. 

1 am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine : 
He feedeth his flock among the lilies." 

One more effort the King makes ; he promises 
her that if she will come to him she shall be in 
very truth his queen, supreme, above all others, the 
only one. But in vain his pleading, in vain the 
anticipations of her glory by the chorus of women. 

SOLO AlTD CHOKUS: SOLOMON AND THE COURT WOMEN.^ 

Solomon. " Thou art beautiful, my love, as Tirzah, 
Comely as Jerusalem, 
Terrible as an army with banners. 
Turn away thine eyes from me. 
For they have overcome me. 
Thy hair is as a flock of goats. 
That lie along the side of Gilead. 
Thy teeth are like a flock of ewes. 
Which are come up from the washing ; 
Whereof every one hath twins, 
And none is bereaved among them. 
Thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate 
Behind thy veil. 

There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, 
And maidens without number. 
But my dove, my undefiled, is but one ; 
She is the only one of her mother ; 
She is the choice one of her that bare her. 

1 Chap. vi. 4-10. 



224 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

The daughters saw her, and called her blessed ; 

Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her. 

Chorus of Women. " Who is she that looketh forth as the 
morning. 
Fair as the moon, 
Clear as the sun, 
Terrible as an army with banners ? " 

All is in vain ; her heart is with her lover in the 
garden of nuts, watching to see whether the vine is 
in bud and the pomegranate is in flower ; compared 
with these pleasures of her rural life those of the 
court are nothing to her. She will not be ungra- 
cious: when the women ask her to give them a 
specimen of her rural dancing, she complies with 
the request. They join in praising her grace and 
beauty, the king adds his praises ; ^ but this com- 
mingling in the life of the court, these courtier-like 
flatteries, have no charm for her. Her heart is 
with her absent lover ; she longs to return to him 
and to her rural life and its simple pleasures. 

SOLO AND CHORUS : THE SHULAMITE, THE PEASANT LOVEK, AND 
THE VILLAGERS.^ 

The Shidamite. " I am my beloved's, 
And his desire is toward me. 
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field ; 
Let us lodge in the villages. 
Let us get up early to the vineyards ; 

Let us see whether the vine hath budded, and its blossom be open, 
And the pomegranates be in flower : 
There will I give thee my love. 

^ Chap. vi. 11-vii. 9. See Daland's monograph for some sug- 
gestive translations and interpretations of the description of the 
dance. 

2 Chap. vii. 10-viii. 7. 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 225 

The mandrakes give forth fragrance, 

And at our doors are all manner of precious fruits, new and old, 

Which I have laid up for thee, my beloved. 

Oh that thou wert as my brother, 

That sucked the breasts of my mother ! 

When I should find thee without, I would kiss thee ; 

Xea, and none would despise me. 

I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother's house, 

Who would instruct me ; 

I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine, 

Of the juice of my pomegranate. 

[ To the women.] His left hand should be under my head, 

And his right hand should embrace me. 

I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, 

That ye stir not up, nor awaken love, 

Until it please." 

The scene once more changes back to Northern 
Palestine. Love has won. The Shulamite maiden 
appears, leaning upon the arm of her peasant lover. 
The village maidens sing a song of greeting to vil- 
lage bride and groom, as they come back to her 
birthplace, to the home beneath the apple-tree 
where she was given birth by her mother, and 
given a second birth by love. For no woman is 
truly born into womanhood until she is born anew 
by love. 

Chorus of Village Maidens. " Who is this that cometh up from 
the wilderness. 
Leaning upon her beloved ? 

Song of Peasant Lover. " Under the apple-tree I awakened 
thee : 
There thy mother was in travail with thee, 
There was she in travail that brought thee forth. 

Shulamite^s Love Song. " Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as 
a seal upon thine arm : 
For love is strong as death ; 



226 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Jealousy is cmel as the grave : 

The flashes thereof are flashes of fire, 

A very flame of the Lobd. 

Many waters cannot quench love. 

Neither can the floods drown it : 

If a man woidd give all the suhstance of his house for love, 

He would utterly be contemned." 

Love is strong as deatli; many waters cannot 
quench it ; floods cannot drown it ; and if a man 
would give all the substance of his house in ex- 
change for love he would utterly be condemned ; 
that is the moral and meaning of this cycle of 
dramatic love songs. 

Eemembering what life was in the Orient, how 
far men had strayed away from the first marriage 
law, — one husband wedded to one wife till death 
do them part, — how love had died and licentious- 
ness had taken its place in that awful system of 
polygamy which created the harem, can we say that 
there was no need of an inspired drama to produce 
the impression of the " Song of Songs " on the 
Eastern world ? Are we sure, as we look at life in 
America, that there is no need that this impression 
be produced to-day on our own world? Is mar- 
riage a la mode unknown with us ? Are there no 
parents who think a good match for the daughter 
is a match to a wealthy or a titled suitor ? Are 
there no men who weigh love against houses and 
lands and call love the lighter weight of the two ? 
Are there no women who find themselves dis- 
traught between the plea of ambition and the plea 
of love and know not which plea to accept? It 



A DRAMA OF LOVE 227 

may be said that it is the commonplace of drama 
and fiction to contrast love and ambition and exalt 
love. But what shall we say of the writer who 
first told the story of this battle between love and 
ambition and put love first ? And I doubt whether 
there can be found anywhere in ancient literature 
a story of pure womanly love antedating the Song 
of Songs. 

I cannot but think that its lesson needs especial 
emphasis in our time and in our country. The 
higher education and the larger life of woman 
bring with them special temptation. Entering into 
literature, business, politics, woman is tempted by 
ambitions of which formerly she knew nothing. 
In public address the home is often scoffed at, the 
husband is treated as a slaveocrat, and the notion 
is sedulously advocated that woman rises into a 
larger life if she turns from wifehood and mother- 
hood to the lecture-room, the professional career, 
the business office. These doors ought not to be 
shut against her ; but it is impossible that these 
doors should be opened, and that larger life given, 
and all the powers quickened by a broader educa- 
tion, without subjecting her to the temptation to 
take ambition in place of love. Against the notion 
that it is a nobler thing to be in business, in a pro- 
fession, in politics, in literature, or on the platform 
than to be the life-companion of one man, loving 
him with fidelity and loved by him, this Song 
of Songs exerts its sweet and sacred influence in 



228 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

behalf of love strong as death, ... a very flame 
of the Lord. 

In some true sense to every one of us, man or 
woman, come love and ambition : God who is love, 
and the world which is ambition.^ As Hercules 
was invited in one direction by pleasure and in the 
other by wisdom, so every one of us is called in 
one direction by ambition and in the other direc- 
tion by love ; and the great and final message of 
the Song of Songs is that love is the supreme 
factor in human life. And this truth of life is 
itself a parable, interpreting the still deeper truth 
that to love God and to be united to him is at once 
the supreme end and the supreme felicity of life. 
For the Song of Songs is an allegory in the same 
sense in which marriage is a symbol. The lesson 
of the Song of Songs is the strength and the joy 
of human love ; but that is itself a prophetic inter- 
pretation of the strength and the joy of God's love 
for his own, and of their love for him. 

1 "The typical interpretation is perfectly compatible with 
Ewald's view, and, indeed, if combined with it, is materially 
improved ; the heroine's true love then represents God, and Solo- 
mon, in better agreement with his historical position and character, 
represents the blandishments of the worid, unable to divert; the 
hearts of his faithftd servants from him." An Introduction to the 
Literature of the Old Testament, by S. K. Driver, D. D., p. 451. 



CHAPTER X 

A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 

The Book of Job is unique in literature. It is 
almost impossible to classify it. Professor Genung 
calls it " The Epic of the Inner Life." It is, how- 
ever, only by a kind of figure that it can be so 
called. The epic poem is supposed to relate at 
length and in metrical form " a series of heroic 
achievements or events under supernatural guid- 
ance." ^ This the Book of Job does not do. Pro- 
fessor Genung explains the title which he gives to 
the book, and with the explanation the title is ex- 
ceedingly felicitous ; " I regard," he says, " this 
ancient book as the record of a sublime epic action, 
whose scene is not the tumultuous battle-field, nor 
the arena of rash adventure, but the solitary soul 
of a righteous man." ^ But on the one hand, to 
designate the narrative of such a struggle in the 
soul of a righteous man as an epic is to give to the 
word a new, though a not inappropriate meaning ; 
and on the other, this description of the poem indi- 
cates but one phase, and not the most important 
nor even the most interesting phase, of the book. 

^ Century Dictionary. 

2 The Epic of the Inner Life, by John F. Genung, pp. 20-26. 



230 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

It is called, with great verisimilitude, a drama, by 
John Owen, and he not inaptly compares it with 
"The Prometheus Bound" of ^schylus, Goethe's 
" Faust," Shakespeare's " Hamlet," and Calderon's 
" Wonder- Working Magician." ^ Yet this word 
" drama " certainly suggests, if it does not require, 
action accompanying and helping to create the 
necessity for the speech, and in the Book of Job, 
except in the prologue, there is no action. What- 
ever may be said of its spirit, in its form it does 
not resemble the other great dramas to which Mr. 
Owen compares it. Biblical scholars have gen- 
erally classified the Book of Job with the " Wisdom 
Literature." The Wisdom Literature was the 
nearest approximation which the Hebrews made to 
philosophy. The philosopher is interested in truth 
for its own sake ; interested in the interrelation- 
ship of different truths; interested in correlating 
and harmonizing truths and so adjusting them as 
to make a more or less complete system of truth. 
The Hebrew had little or no interest in this pro- 
cess ; he never undertook it ; he was interested in 
truths but not in truth, and in truths only as they 
bore upon conduct and life. His wisdom, therefore, 
took the form not of general systems, but of spe- 
cific affirmations of principles in their relation to 
actual life conditions. The Hebrew's philosophy 
was not abstract, but concrete ; not generic, but 
applied ; not scholastic, but expressed in the terms 
of experience. Thus the tendency of his philosophy 

1 The Five Great Sceptical Dramas of History , by John Owen. 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 231 

was either to aphoristic forms, as in the Book of 
Proverbs; or to dramatic forms, as in the Song 
of Songs and the Book of Job ; or to an admixture 
of the two, as in the Book of Ecclesiastes. On the 
whole it appears to me that in Biblical criticism 
the Book of Job has been correctly classified ; that 
its epic character — as the narrative of a soul 
struggle, — and its dramatic character — as the in- 
terplay of human thought and emotion, — are sub- 
sidiary to its philosophic character, as the discus- 
sion of a profound problem of human life ; but 
that this discussion is not abstract and intellectual 
but vital and dramatic. Its interest lies not in any 
theory which it promulgates, but in human experi- 
ence and in the bearing of a popular theory upon 
human experience in a time of trial. Professor 
Kent calls the book " Philosophical Drama." ^ I 
should rather, with a slight difference in emphasis, 
call it Dramatic Philosophy .^ 

1 The Wise Men of Ancient History and their Proverbs, by 
Charles Foster Kent, Ph. D. 

2 It is hardly necessary to consider as a possible theory that the 
Book of Job is historical ; the epilogue alone is quite conclusive 
upon that point. At the same time it is possible that it had an 
historical foundation, as most of the greater works of fiction have 
had. " ' Hamlet ' rests on an historical foundation ; so does ' Mac- 
beth ; ' yet they are works of imagination. ' The Ring" and the 
Book ' is founded on fact ; Mr. Browning- dug the substance of 
the story out of an old law report. In Ezekiel Job is referred to 
as if he were a well-known person. It is possible, of course, that 
the allusion here may be literary. We often speak of Polonius, 
or Colonel Newcome, or Mr. Pickwick as though they were real 
characters. It is, however, altogether probable that Job was an 
historical person, and that traditions concerning him were current 



232 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Without, then, endeavoring to classify the Book 
o£ Job, we may say of it that it has some of the 
qualities of all three types of literature, — the epic, 
the drama, philosophy, but not all of the character- 
istics of either. If it be regarded as an epic, it is 
what Professor Genung calls it, an epic of the inner 
life. The epics of Homer deal with external ad- 
venture and with character as it is evolved out of 
and manifested in adventurous experiences. There 
is no action in the Book of Job. Throughout the 
poem the central figure sits among the ashes, his 
only adventures those of the spirit, striving by 
much vain reflection to solve the mystery of life. 
Not even by external symbols, as in Dante, are his 
spiritual struggles represented. If the book be 
regarded as a drama it is a monodrama. The 
celestial movement is introduced in the prologue 
simply to interpret the drama to us ; the wife and 
the friends are but foils, partly to give occasion to 
Job's discourse, partly by contrast to interpret it. 
All attempt to find in them distinctive characters 
is in vain. Froude well says, " The friends repeat 
one another with but little difference ; the sameness 
being of course intentional, as showing that they 
were not speaking for themselves but as represen- 
tatives of a prevailing opinion." ^ The only actor 
in the drama is Job himself ; the only action the 

among the Jews." Seven Puzzling Bible Books, by Washington 
Gladden, D. D., p. 109. 

1 Shwt Studies on Great Subjects : The Booh of Job, by James 
Anthony Froude, M. A., p. 249. 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 233 

battle between faith and skepticism, hope and de- 
spair, in his own soul. If the book be regarded 
as philosophy, it is philosophy translated into the 
terms of experience. There is here no philosopher 
coolly studying the problem of life as a geologist 
studies an ancient fossil, or an anatomist the dead 
body which he dissects. The problems of life, love, 
death, and sorrow are not studied as problems. 
There is no argument here for immortality as in 
the Phaedo of Socrates, no argument for the exist- 
ence of a God as in Diman's " Theistic Argument " 
or Flint's " Theism," no balancing of probabilities 
to reach a conclusion as in Bishop Butler's " An- 
alogy of Eeligion." The soul of a good and godly 
man is portrayed in its living agony, seeking to 
find, in spite of the apparent injustice of life, a 
ground for its faith in the reality and the sov- 
ereignty of truth and goodness. Job is a kind of 
spiritual Laocoon, wrestling with the twin serpents 
of doubt and despair, and to him they are such 
dreadful realities that he has no thought for fine 
philosophies or scientific reasonings. The method 
of the Book of Job is the reverse of the scientific 
method ; the problem is presented to the reader as 
one of experience, not as one of philosophy. 

The date of the book is entirely unknown, as is 
its author ; formerly it was supposed to be one of 
the oldest books in the Bible ;^ modern scholars 

^ Thus in Townsend's Bible, which undertook to print the whole 
of the Bible in a true chronological order, the Book of Job is 
printed among the Genesis narratives immediately prior to the 



234 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

regard it as one of the latest.^ Thus the supposed 
date for its composition has fluctuated between 
B. c. 2337 and b. c. 400. The arguments for the 
earlier date may all be summed up in the fact that 
the scene is laid in the patriarchal age ; the chief 
argument for the later date is that the line of 
thought in the book presupposes a much later in- 
tellectual development than can be attributed to 
the patriarchs.2 

Whatever the date of the composition, there is 
no doubt as to the time fixed in the author's mind 
for the events described and the discussion to which 
those events give rise. It is as certain that the 
Book of Job deals with conditions existing prior to 
the giving of the law under Moses, as it is that 
Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" deals with scenes 
and events in Rome in the first century before 
Christ. And while the date and authorship of the 

call of Abram. Mr. Townsend says, " The life of Job is placed 
before the life of Abrabam, on tbe authority of Dr. Hales. Job 
himself, or one of his contemporaries, is generally supposed to 
have been the author of this book ; -which Moses obtained -when 
in Midian, and, with some alterations, addressed to the Israelites." 
The Old Testament arranged in Historical and Chronological Order, 
by the Eev. George Townsend, M. A., p. 35, note. 

^ " It is not possible to fix the date of the Book (Job) precisely; 
but it will certainly not be earlier than the age of Jeremiah, and 
most probably it was written either during or shortly after the 
Babylonian captivity." An Introduction to the Literature of the 
Old Testament, by S. R. Driver, D. D., p. 432. 

2 For the arguments for the earlier date see note in Townsend's 
Bible, p. 35 ; for arguments for the later date see Driver's Intro- 
duction, pp. 431-435, and The Book of Job, by R. W. Raymond, 
Ph. D., pp. 50-62. 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 235 

book are matters of no considerable importance, the 
date affixed by the author to the scenes and discus- 
sions in the book is of the first importance. The 
discussions of the book concern the profoundest 
problems of religion ; but there is no suggestion in 
it of a temple, a tabernacle, a Levitical priesthood, 
a sacrificial system, the Ten Commandments, or to 
any prophet or any events in Jewish history, or 
indeed to any revelation of God whatever other 
than that which is made through nature. The 
object of the book, whoever wrote it, and whenever 
it was written, is to portray the mental and spir- 
itual conditions of an earnest and devout soul, con- 
fronted by the profoundest problem of human life, 
— the significance of suffering, — with no other 
light upon that problem than such as is afforded 
by a study of nature. This fact is to be kept con- 
stantly in mind in reading this poem. It cannot 
be understood at all, except as the reader puts 
himself back in imagination into the early patri- 
archal age, the age of Abram before his vision of 
God, the age which preceded or was outside of all 
special revelation of God in and to human experi- 
ence through prophets or lawgivers. The success 
with which the author has achieved the difficult 
task, not merely of portraying the outward charac- 
ter of this age, but of interpreting its mental and 
moral conditions, constitutes the strongest reason 
for questioning the conclusion of modern scholars 
that it was written after the age of Solomon. If 
they are right in their conclusions, — and on such 



236 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

questions it is generally wise for the inexpert reader 
to accept tlie conclusions of the expert, — the im- 
aginative genius of the unknown author is almost 
without a parallel in literature. Historic dramas 
and novels are almost invariably full of anachro- 
nisms. Not only the outward life is often imper- 
fectly portrayed, but habitually sentiments and 
thoughts which belong to a later age are imputed 
to the characters of a previous age. Shakespeare's 
historic plays do not attempt accuracy either in 
their historic setting or in their psychological 
portraiture. Walter Scott's historical novels have 
even less vraisemblance to the mental and moral 
life of the times in which they are laid. Of modern 
novels "Henry Esmond" and "Lorna Doone" 
are perhaps the only two which can be said to ap- 
proximate accuracy as historical pictures of either 
the outer or the inner life. But the Book of Job 
is almost if not absolutely free from anachronisms. 
All that we know of the patriarchal age leads us to 
the conclusion that the book is photogTaphic in its 
realistic portraiture of that time, and in its sympa- 
thetic understanding of the thoughts of a people 
unto whom no light had come from any open 
vision. Let us try first to restate to ourselves in 
undramatic form the mental state of such a people. 
Says George Eliot, "A shadowy conception of 
power that by much persuasion can be induced to 
refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most 
easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the 
minds of men who have always been pressed close 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 237 

by primitive wants, and to wliom a life of hard toil 
has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic 
religious faith." ^ That she here correctly de- 
scribes the primitive form of religious belief, which 
is founded on fear of some unknown supernatural 
power or powers, is clear to all who have made any 
study of pagan religions. Imagine that there has 
been gradually added to this earliest belief the 
conviction expressed in Abram's question, " Shall 
not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " the con- 
viction that there is one God and that he is a right- 
eous God ; the deduction is inevitable and irresist- 
ible, that the way to avoid the harm which he can 
and sometimes does inflict is by living righteously. 
Thus life is conceived of as under divine law and a 
divine lawgiver ; if we obey his righteous will and 
are righteous he will reward us ; if we disobey his 
righteous will and are unrighteous he will punish 
us. Happiness and suffering cease to be regarded 
as either accidental occurrences or arbitrary inflic- 
tions; they constitute a system of rewards and 
punishments ; prosperity is interpreted as a sign of 
divine approval, and suffering as a sign of divine 
condemnation. Thus far and no farther had reli- 
gious faith developed in the patriarchal age. The 
reward of virtue was attested in Abram's career by 
a great wealth of flocks and herds ; the penalty of 
vice was attested by the destruction of the Cities of 
the Plain. What measure of truth there is in this 
conception of happiness and suffering as a divine 

^ Silas Marner, by George Eliot, chap. i. 



238 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

system of rewards and penalties, it does not come 
within my province here to consider ; that it is the 
whole truth no one will believe who regards Jesus 
Christ as at once the supreme object of his Father's 
approving love and as the Man of Sorrows. That 
pain is sometimes penal is certain ; that it has other 
ministries than punishment is also certain ; that 
it is in itself an evidence of divine disfavor no 
Christian believer can for a moment seriously sup- 
pose. But in the patriarchal age this was the uni- 
versal estimate of the place of pain in the divine 
economy. 

Trained in this belief until it had become axio- 
matic with him, not an opinion consciously deduced 
from a study of life, but a part of his intellectual 
existence into which he had grown from his youth 
up, Job had lived a virtuous life and had prospered. 
His religion had been real, not formal ; had ruled 
his life, not merely served as an appendage to it. 
Stung by the reproaches of his friends he thus 
describes the spirit of his life : and the divine ap- 
proval explicitly expressed by Jehovah, alike in the 
prologue and at the end of the drama, shows con- 
clusively that it is no complacent self-portraiture 
of an unconscious pretender, but is intended by the 
author as a dramatic representation of the hero of 
his story. 

" Oh tliat I were as in the months of old, 
As in the days -when God watched over me ; 
When his lamp shined upon my head, 
And by his light I •walked through darkness ; 
As I was in my autumn days. 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 239 

When the friendship of God was over my tent ; 

When the Almighty was yet with me, 

And my children were about me ; 

When my steps were washed with butter 

And the rock poured me out rivers of oil ; 

When I went forth to the gate by the city ; 

When I fixed my seat in the open place. 

The young men saw me, and withdrew themselves, 

And the aged rose up and stood ; 

The princes refrained talking 

And laid their hand on their mouth ; 

The voice of the nobles was hushed, 

And their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth. 

For the ear that heard blessed me ; 
And the eye that saw bare witness for me ; 
Because I had delivered the poor when he cried, 
The fatherless also, and him that had no helper. 
The blessing of him that was ready to perish came npon me ; 
And I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. 
I clothed myself with justice, and it clothed itself with me ; 
As a mantle and as a turban was my judgment. 
I was eyes to the blind. 
And feet was I to the lame. 
I was a father to the needy 

And the cause of him that I knew not I searched out. 
And I brake the fangs of the unrighteous 
And from his teeth I snatched the prey. " ^ 

Such was the character, such the previous life of 
the central figure in the poem, by whose experience 
the current theology of his time is to be tested; 

1 Job xxix. 2-17. The translations throughout this chapter are 
taken either from the Revised Version, or from Professor Genung's 
translation in The Epic of the Inner Life, or are produced by a 
combination of the two. To Professor Genung's volume, one of 
the best fruits of the modern or literary study of the Bible, I 
desire to acknowledge my special indebtedness in the preparation 
of this chapter. 



240 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

in whose experience the world drama of life, love, 
death, and sorrow is to be portrayed ; through 
whose experience also is to be illustrated, if I read 
the story aright, the soul's need of some other reve- 
lation of God and his truth than is afforded by the 
mere study of nature and of life. 

The drama opens with a prologue in the celestial 
sphere. The sons of God come on a certain day 
before the throne of Jehovah to give an account 
of themselves. They are like inspectors who have 
gone out into the various parts of the king's domain 
and come back to report what they have seen. 
One of them is called the Adversary. He is not 
the embodiment of all evil, — a demon of malice, a 
prince of wickedness, the Satan of Milton, the 
Apollyon of Bunyan. He is a type of wickedness 
in its earlier stages ; the cynic among the angels ; 
who does not believe in disinterested virtue ; but 
who yet makes his tour of the earth with other 
angels and with them comes, unforbidden, into the 
court of heaven to report what he has seen. To 
this cynic Jehovah says : " Have you considered 
Job, my servant, how upright a man he is?" 
" Upright ! " replies the Adversary ; " who would 
not be upright if he were paid as well as Job? 
Doth he serve God for naught? Take away his 
prosperity and see how quickly he will part with 
his uprightness." Thus dramatically is presented 
the one conclusive argument against the doctrine 
that virtue is paid for by Providence. If it were 
paid for it would not be virtue ; it would only be a 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 241 

subtler and shrewder form of self-service. The 
argument is not formulated, but its force is instinc- 
tively felt by the reader, who perceives that if Job 
does not stand the test proposed he will be proved 
not to have been virtuous but only shrewd. Virtue 
must be its own reward or it is no virtue. To this 
unexpressed premise of the cynic's argument Je- 
hovah accedes ; he accepts the challenge ; and he 
gives the Adversary freedom to apply the test him- 
self ; " only," he says, " upon him put not forth 
thine hand." 

The scene is shifted to the earth, where the 
Adversary's work is seen by the spectator, though 
the part of the Adversary is unknown to those who 
suffer from it. There is a family gathering ; all 
the sons and daughters of Job have met in the 
eldest brother's house ; Job, as we should say provi- 
dentially, is somewhere without, when a messenger 
comes to him with the word that the Sabeans in a 
foray have carried off a portion of his property and 
slain the servants ; a second messenger treads close 
upon his heels with the report of a bolt of lightning 
which has destroyed his sheep and killed the shep- 
herds; a third follows with the word that three 
bands of Chaldeans have carried off the camels 
and slain their keepers ; a fourth that a great wind 
has smitten the house in which his sons and daugh- 
ters were feasting and buried them in the ruins 
and not one has escaped alive. This morning Job 
was prosperous and happy ; now he is in poverty 
and bereaved. But he does not surrender his 



242 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

virtue nor lose his faith. " Naked," lie says, " I 
came into the world, and naked shall I go out; 
Jehovah hath given, Jehovah hath taken away; 
blessed be the name of Jehovah." 

The scene shifts back to the celestial sphere, 
where the cynic comes with the other angels to 
make his report. Jehovah asks him if he is satis- 
fied that Job's virtue was disinterested : " He still 
holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedest 
me against him to destroy him without cause." 
But the cynic is not satisfied : " Skin for skin," he 
says ; " yea, all that a man hath will he give for his 
life. But put forth thine hand now and touch his 
bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to 
thy face." Jehovah accepts the second challenge ; 
again gives the Adversary permission to do his 
worst to Job, so that he save him alive. And the 
Adversary goes forth, first to smite Job with a 
painful and humiliating disease ; then to turn his 
wife also into a cynic ; ^ and finally to send him 
three friends to console him by telling him that he 
must have been a great sinner or he could not be a 

^ " One of the cnrioxis difficulties of the Book of Job is the 
various renderings of which its somewhat strange language seems 
to be capable. In our English Bible the wife's counsel is ' Curse 
God and die.' In the vulgate, followed by the French, it is ' Bless 
God and die.' And yet, radical as seems the difEerenee, the 
difference is more apparent than real ; in the one case she speaks 
seriously, ' Of what benefit is your God to you ? Curse him and 
then die ; ' in the other she speaks ironically, ' You bless your 
Jehovah, do you ? you worship him ? you say blessed be the name 
of Jehovah that taketh away ? Well, bless him and die ! What 
will he do for your blessing ? " 



A SP IB IT UAL TRAGEDY 243 

great sufferer. So the Epilogue ends, and the true 
drama, the debate between Job and his friends, 
begins. His wife believes in his integrity, but not 
in his principles. She sneers at his faith ; counsels 
him to abandon it; and advises suicide as a last 
and only refuge. His friends share his sorrow, 
share it so heartily that for seven days and nights 
they sit speechless beside him ; but while they 
believe in his theology they do not believe in his 
integrity ; for truth to tell, it is impossible to believe 
in both. That theology is very simple : Jehovah 
is the ruler of life and Jehovah is just ; therefore 
if suffering has fallen upon any man it must be 
because he has sinned and deserves punishment. 
First gently, then with continually increasing pun- 
gency, and sometimes with temper, they urge Job 
to confess the sins which he has kept concealed 
from his fellows, and so escape the continued dis- 
pleasure of his God. 

At times Job seems inclined to accept his wife's 
counsel. He does not curse God, but he curses the 
day wherein he was born with an execration so 
bitter that it arouses the pious protest of his friend 
Eliphaz. He does not commit suicide nor think 
of so doing, but he longs for death, and beseeches 
Jehovah to crush him. 

" Wherefore," he cries, " is light given to him that is in misery, 
And life unto the bitter in soul ? 
Which long for death but it cometh not, 
And dig for it more than for hid treasures, 
Which rejoice exceedingly. 
And are glad when they can find the grave ? 



244 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Wliy is light given to a man whose way is hid, 
And whom God hath hedged in ? " ^ 

But never once does he yield to the exhortations of 
his orthodox friends ; never once does he lose faith 
in his own integrity ; never once does he entertain, 
even for an iQstant, the suggestion that he make 
his peace with the unknown God, by pretending to 
a confession of sins which he has not committed, a 
penitence which he does not feel, and a recognition 
of the justice of his sufferings against which his 
soul vehemently protests. It is this conflict be- 
tween the theology which had become a part of his 
religion, and this truth of life which nothing will 
induce him to deny, which makes the tragedy of 
his spiritual experience. His religion has been 
built on his faith that a just God is the ruler of 
this life, and therefore this life is just. To him has 
never come any external revelation ; he knows no- 
thing of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt ; of 
the passage through the Ked Sea ; of the giving 
of the law to Moses at Mt. Sinai ; of the preser- 
vation of Israel in the wanderings in the wilder- 
ness ; of God's patient forgiveness of his sinning 
people; of Joshua's victories; of David's songful 
visions of God ; of Elijah's experiences of divine 
support. He cannot buttress his weakened faith by 
resting in these confirmatory experiences of others. 
He can get no help from his wife, who has aban- 
doned faith in his theology ; nor from his friends, 
who have abandoned faith in him ; nor from any 
1 Job iii. 20-23. 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 245 

accepted hope in a future life which may redress the 
wrongs of this, for in his age there is no such hope. 
To him, as to the men of his time, life is but a 
breath, which man gaspeth out and then is gone. 

" The cloud vanisheth away, and is gone, 
So he that goeth down to the grave shall not come np again." ^ 

What to believe he knows not ; only he knows this, 
that he has not so sinned as to deserve this punish- 
ment. The tragedy of his life is not that his pro- 
perty has been swept away, his children slain, his 
health destroyed, his wife made a tempter, his 
friends a deceitful hope, "like a channel of brooks 
that pass away," leaving but a dry bed to taunt the 
thirst of the ^ perishing pilgrim. The tragedy is 
this : that his conception of life as a kingdom ruled 
over by a just God is shattered, and his faith in 
God himself as a God of justice is darkened and 
at times well-nigh destroyed. The foundation of 
his moral life — his faith in the supremacy of 
righteousness — is imperiled, and he realizes the 
peril. His anguish of spirit presages that cry of a 
greater Sufferer than Job, " My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me ? " while he has not, as that 
Divine Sufferer had, the unconquerable faith, which 
even in the hour when he seemed forsaken could 
still cry, « My God." 

The theology of his friends is entirely self-con- 
sistent ; the only difficulty with it is that it is not 
consistent with the facts of life. This theology is 
1 Job vii. 9. 



246 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

put by Eliphaz in his first speech of pious counsel 
to Job : 

" Bethink thee now ; who that was guiltless hath perished, 
And where have the upright been cut off ? 
As I have seen — they that plough iniquity, 
And that sow wickedness, reap the same. 
By the breath of God they perish, 
And by the blast of his anger they are consumed." ^ 

The practical application follows logically enough, 
though Eliphaz leaves Bildad to state it : 

*' Doth God pervert judgment ? 
Or doth the Almighty pervert justice ? 
If thy children have sinned against him, 

And he have delivered them into the hand of their transgression: 
If thou wouldest seek diligently unto God, 
And make thy supplication to the Almighty ; 
If thou wert pure and upright ; 
Surely now he would awake for thee, 
And make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous. 
And though thy beginning was small 
Yet thy latter end should greatly increase." ^ 

And when Job indignantly resents the implication 
that he has been a great sinner else great suffering 
would not have fallen upon him, his friends are 
quite ready to invent facts in order to sustain their 
theory. He must have sinned or he would not 
have been punished : so Eliphaz concludes : 

" Is not thy wickedness great ? 
Neither is there any end to thine iniquities. 
For thou hast taken pledges of thy brother for nought, 
And stripped the naked of their clothing. 
Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, 

1 Job iv. 7-9. 

2 Job viii. 3-7. 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 247 

And thou hast withholden bread from the hungry. 

While the man of the strong arm — his was the land, 

And the respected of persons dwelt therein ! 

Thou hast sent widows away empty, 

And the arms of the fatherless have been broken. 

Therefore snares are round about thee, 

And sudden fear troubleth thee, 

Or darkness, that thou canst not see, 

And abundance of waters cover thee." ^ 

The argument is very simple, and would be en- 
tirely adequate if it were in accordance with the 
facts, but it is not ; and it angers Job, not because 
it is unjust to him, but because it is false and 
assumes that God is one to be pleased with false- 
hood used in his defense. Job's splendid burst of 
indignation against the use of falsehood in defense 
of God is one of the most notable passages in the 
poem, and deserves to be often repeated in our 
own time. For in all ages, alas I even in ours also, 
ecclesiasticism has imagined that the cause of reli- 
gion can be supported by falsehood, and that the 
spirit of reverence can be nurtured by denying or 
concealing from ourselves and others the facts of 
life. Job protests against all such special pleading 
for God : 

" Will ye speak lies for God, 
And talk deceitfully for him ? 
Will ye show him favor ? 
Will ye be special pleaders for God ? " 2 

But if the theology of the three friends is simple 
and consistent, Job's is not. In truth he has no 

1 Job xxii. 5-11. 

2 Job xiii. 7, 8. 



248 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

theology ; he has only experience. This experience 
to which, when we share it, we rarely dare to give 
expression, he utters with an abandon which seems 
to his companions profane, and which to the modern 
reader would perhaps seem so were it not found 
in the Bible, and there somewhat softened by the 
Authorized Version. The experience of a soul in 
vain endeavoring to harmonize the apparent injus- 
tice and even cruelty of life, when he is suffering 
from it, with his faith in the justice and goodness 
of God, in whom he is struggling to retain his 
faith, is never consistent. Job recognizes and con- 
fesses his own inconsistency : " I am not myself," 
he cries ; and this inconsistency he attributes to the 
right cause, — the indignation born of his wretched- 
ness and aggravated by the self-complacent counsels 
of his friends. 

" Oh that my indignation were weighed, were weighed, 
And my calamity were laid in the balances against it ! 
For now it would be heavier than the sand of the seas : 
Therefore have my words been rash. 
For the arrows of the Almighty are within me. 
Whose poison my spirit drinketh up." ^ 

At times he resents with bitter scorn their cool 
assumption that he must be a sinner above all 
others because his afflictions are so great ; at times 
he pleads with them with touching pathos to put 
themselves in his place, and trust him, their old 
and well proved friend. 

" Now therefore be pleased to look upon me ; 
For surely I shall not lie to your face. 

1 Job vi. 2-4. 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 249 

Return, I pray you, let there be no injustice 
Yea, return again, my cause is righteous. 
Is there injustice on my tongne ? 
Cannot my sense discern what is wrong ? " ^ 

He confesses tliat lie is not faultless : — 

" How shall a man he just before God ? 
If one should desire to contend with him 
He could not answer him one of a thousand." ^ ! 

But he calls himself "the just, the upright ; " denies 
that he has done anything to deserve the afflictions 
which have fallen upon him, and declares that inno- 
cence is vain, and virtue no protection against the 
Almighty and the Inscrutable One. 

" I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent. 
I shall be condemned ; 
Why then do I labor in vain ? 
If I wash myself with snow water 
And make my hands never so clean ; 
Yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch, 
And mine own clothes shall abhor me." ^ 

But he does not concede the justice of this con- 
demnation; he resents it; he affirms its essential 
injustice; he has no fear of a Day of Judgment 
and he will not pretend. On the contrary he longs 
for it ; and with the splendid audacity of self-con- 
scious virtue he challenges God to make known the 
verdict against him, a challenge which he repeats 
again and again. 

" Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, 
That thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, 
And shine upon the counsel of the wicked ? 

1 Job vi. 28-30. 2 Job ix. 2, 3. 

8 Job ix. 28-31. 



250 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Hast thou eyes of flesh, 

Or seest thou as man seeth ? 

Are thy days as the days of man, 

Or thy years as man's days, 

That thou inquirest after mine iniquity, 

And searchest after my sin, 

Although thou knowest that I am not "wicked ; 

And there is none that can deliver out of thine hand ? " ^ 

And lie insists that his experience of the injustice 
of life is not peculiar. His friends aver that virtue 
is always rewarded and sin is always punished : they 
have described life as they think it ought to be. 
He describes life as it is ; and if it must be con- 
ceded that his picture is much too dark, yet it is 
not darker than it often appears to the soul tried 
in the experience of an apparently unjust sorrow, 
as Job is tried. 

" Wherefore do the -wicked live. 
Become old, yea, -wax mighty in power ? 
Their seed is established -with them in their sight. 
And their offspring before their eyes. 
Their houses are safe from fear, 
Neither is the rod of God upon them. 
Their buU gendereth and f aHeth not ; 
Their cow calveth and casteth not her calf. 
They send forth their little ones like a flock, 
And their children dance. 
They sing to the timbrel and harp, 
And rejoice at the sound of the pipe. 
They spend their days in prosperity, 
And in a mom.ent they go down to the grave. 
Yet they said imto God, Depart from us ; 
For we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. 
What is the Almighty that we should serve him ? 
And what profit should we have if we pray unto him ? " ^ 

1 Job X. 3-7. 2 Job xxi. 7-15. 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 251 

To the insistence of his friends that the prosperity 
of the wicked is short-lived, "that his prosperity 
shall not endure," that 

" The heavens shall reveal his iniquity, 
And earth shall rise up against him, 
And the increase of him shall depart," 

Job replies scornfully : — 

" How oft is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out ? 
That their destruction cometh upon them ? 
That God distributeth sorrows in his anger ? 
That they are as stubble before the wind 
And as chaff that the storm carrieth away ? 
Ye say, God layeth up his iniquity for his children. 
Let him recompense it xmto the wicked himself, that he may feel 

it. 
Let his own eyes see his destruction, 
And let himself drink of the wrath of the Almighty." ^ 

If Job could but believe in immortality he might 
derive some consolation from such a belief ; not so 
much because it would give him a reward hereafter 
to compensate for the suffering here, for Job does 
serve God for naught, and his complainings are 
less against the sufferings which have fallen upon 
himself than against the revelation of the injustice 
of life which those sufferings have brought to him. 
But if he could believe in immortality he might 
believe in divine justice. He argues with himself ; 
tries to persuade himself of immortality ; seeks in 
nature for some^nalys-is to furnish such a hope; 
but with the result which generally has attended 
similar endeavors : a hope of immortality founded 
1 Job xxi. 17-20. 



252 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

on an analysis drawn from nature furnishes but a 
poor support in time of actual trial : — 

..." there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout 

again 
And that the tender branch thereof will not cease. 
Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, 
And the stock thereof die in the ground ; 
Yet through the scent of water it will bud, 
And put forth boughs like a plant. 
But man dieth, and wasteth away : 
Yea, man gaspeth out his breath, — and where is he ? 
As the waters fail from the sea 
And the river decayeth and drieth up ; 
So man lieth down and riseth not ; 
Till the heavens be no more they shall not awake, 
Nor be roused out of their sleep. 
Oh that thou wouldest hide me in the grave ; 
That thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, 
That thou wouldest appoint me a set time and remember me ! 
If a man die shall he live again ? 
Then all the days of my warfare would I wait, 
Till my release should come." ^ 

Once indeed out of his very despair a hope of im- 
mortality is struck as a spark by the blow of flint 
on steel, but only to expire as speedily as such a 
spark. He cannot disbelieve in the divine justice ; 
this life is not just; therefore there must come, 
there will come, a day of vindication : — 

" I know that my Vindicator liveth, — 
And that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth : 
And after my skin hath been thus destroyed, 
Yet without my flesh shall I see God : 
Whom I shall see for myself. 
And mine eyes shall behold and not another." ^ 

1 Job xiv. 7-14. 

2 Job xix. 25-27. The word Redeemer or Vindicator " denotes 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 253 

But this hope, born of despair, is but a momentary 
gleam, like a star shining through a murky atmos- 
phere ; then the clouds roll up again and it is gone. 
The bitterness of Job's experience is not that 
his theology is shattered — he does not lament its 
loss; nor that his faith in immortality is over- 
thrown — he lived before the age of faith in im- 
mortality and was learning one ground of that 
faith in learning the imperfection and injustice of 
this earthly life, if this life is indeed all. It is not 
even in the desertion of him by his friends or the 
scornful abandonment of his faith by his wife. It 
is that the God whom he had believed to be a just 
God and a personal friend has become in his 
thought a personal Enemy, an Adversary, a Spy 
of Men,^ whose justice it is well-nigh impossible 
for him any longer to believe in. He tauntingly 

the next of kin whose duty it was to avenge the blood of a mur- 
dered man {see Numbers xxxv. 19), and to succor the bereaved and 
needy (see Ruth iii. 9-13 ; iv. 1-8). With wonderful skill Job 
chooses the word that gathers into itself all that he has longed 
for ; it means one who will befriend him, avenge his wrong, be 
his Daysman, make God his friend again." The Epic of the Inner 
Life, by John F. Genung, p. 236, note. Does it not rather mean 
God himself ? is it not a spiritual reaction from his skepticism 
back into his fundamental faith in the righteousness of God ? A 
similar reaction is illustrated in the contrast in chapter xxiii. 
between verses 8, 9 and verse 10. The phrase rendered in the 
Authorized Version "in my flesh" is literally "from my flesh," 
and might mean either '* out from my flesh " or " apart from my 
flesh." The context clearly demands the latter rendering, and 
" without my flesh " is given by the Revision in the margin. 

^ Job vii. 20, Renan's translation. " Watcher of men " in 
Revised Version. 



254 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

cliallenges God to produce his accusations ; he 
would meet them as a prince ; he would glory in 
them. It almost seems as though by his challenge 
he would provoke the Almighty to this trial in the 
court o£ reason and of justice : — 

" Oh that I had one to hear me ! 
(Lo, here is my signature, let the Almighty answer me.) 
And that I had the indictment which mine adversary hath 

written ! 
Snrely, I would carry it upon my shoidder ; 
I would bind it unto me as a crown. 
I would declare unto him the number of my steps ; 
As a prince would I go near unto him." ^ 

But the Almighty keeps silence. Would even that 
he would reveal himself through another ; that 
some man would come in human experience to in- 
terpret the Unknown : — 

" He is not a man like me, that I should answer him, 
That we should come together in judgment ; 
Nor is there any daysman betwixt us, 
That might lay his hand upon us both." ^ 

But God sends no Daysman, no Interpreter ; he 
presents no charges ; he makes no revelation ; He 
is the Unknown and the Unknowable, the Almighty 
yet the Inscrutable. This self-hiding of God is 
the gravamen of Job's complaint against him : 

*' Oh that I knew where I might find him ! 
That I might come even to his seat ! 
I would set in order my cause before him ; 
And fill my mouth with arguments. 
I would know the words which he would answer me ; 
And understand what he would say unto me. 

1 Job xxxi. 35-37. 2 Job ix. 32, 33. 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 255 

Would lie contend with me in the greatness of his power ? 

Nay ; but surely he would give heed unto me. 

There the uprig-ht might reason with him ; 

So should I be delivered forever from my judge. 

Behold I go forward, but he is not there ; 

And backward, but I cannot perceive him : 

On the left hand, when he doth work, but I cannot behold him; 

And on the right hand he hideth himself that I cannot see him." ^ 

Job even doubts at times whether the case would 
be bettered if God were to reveal himself ; responds 
to the imagined indictment against himself by an 
indictment of his judge, which in one breath he 
utters, in the next half takes back. 

" Though I were righteous, yet would I not answer ; 

Must I make supplication to mine adversary ? 

K I had called, and he had answered me, 

Yet would I not believe that he hearkened unto my voice. 

For he breaketh me with a tempest, 

And multiplieth my wounds without cause. 

He suffereth me not to recover my breath, 

For he surfeiteth me with bitternesses. 

Is the question of strength, — behold, the Mighty One He ! 

Of judgment, — ' Who will set me a day ? ' 

Were I righteous, mine own mouth would condemn me ; 

Perfect were I, yet would he prove me perverse. 
J Perfect I am, — I value not my soiil — I despise my life — 

It is all one — therefore I say. 

Perfect and wicked he consumeth alike. 

If the scourge destroyeth suddenly, 

He mocketh at the dismay of the innocent. 

The earth is given over into the hands of the wicked ; 

The face of the judges he veileth ; — 

If is not he, who then is it ? " ^ 

At length the passionate indignation of Job 
bums itself out ; his friends are silenced and no 
1 Job xxiii. 3-9. 2 Jq^ i^. 15_24. 



256 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

longer add fuel to the flames ; ^ and lie himself 
presages the conclusion to which the monodrama 
eventually conducts the reader .^ A theodicy is im- 
possible ; the ways of God are not to be justified 
to man; we are too little and he is too great for our 
understanding of him ; at best we know truth only 
in fragments ; we are surrounded on every side by 
the Infinite, and we can peer but a little way into 
its solemn mysteries. Men mine for the precious 
metals ; where no bird has ever flown and no beast 
has ever made a pathway for himself, man discov- 
ers the silver and the gold, and the precious stones. 
So where no man has ever gone, where no winged 
imagination has ever soared, no human enterprise 
has ever explored a way, is wisdom hidden : God 
alone knows its hiding place. 

^ It does not come witliin the province of this chapter to con- 
sider the question whether the speech of Elihu (chapters xxxii.- 
xxxvii.) is an interpolation or not. Fronde summarizes well the 
arguments in the affirmative (Short Studies, vol. i. p. 257, note) ; 
Genung the arguments in the negative (The Epic of the Inner Life, 
p. 78, note). In either case, as Genung says, it " presents the 
friends' side of the question freed from the heats and disturbances 
of the controversy, and brought to its best expression," and there- 
fore it may be omitted from further consideration here. 

2 Professor Moulton puts the passage paralleling the miner's 
search for gold with the philosopher's search for wisdom into the 
mouth of Zophar. The Modern Reader'' s Bible. There is admit- 
tedly some difficulty in the text, and it seems not improbable that 
chapter xxvii. 8-23 was uttered by Zophar, not by Job, since it 
agrees with the general position of the three friends and disagrees 
with that insisted on by Job. But chapter xxviii. anticipates the 
conclusion of the whole poem, and clearly in its spirit belongs 
rather to Job, to whom life is a profound mystery, than to the 
three friends, who can see no mystery in it. 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 257 

" Surely, there is a mine for silver 
And a place for gold which they refine. 
Iron is taken out of the earth, 
And brass is molten out of the stone. 



That path no bird of prey knoweth, 

Neither hath the falcon's eye seen it ; 

The proud beasts have not trodden it, 

Nor hath the fierce lion passed thereby. 

He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock ; 

He overturneth the mountains by the roots. 

He cutteth out channels among the rocks ; 

And his eye seeth every precious thing. 

He bindeth the streams that they trickle not ; 

And the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light. 

But Wisdom — where shall it be found ? 

And where is the place of understanding ? 

Man knoweth not the price thereof ; 

Neither is it found in the land of the living. 

The deep saith, It is not in me ; 

And the sea saith, It is not with me. 

God Tmderstandeth the way thereof, 

And he knoweth the place thereof. 

For he looketh to the ends of the earth, 

And seeth under the whole heaven ; 

To make a weight for the wind ; 

Yea, he meteth out the waters by measure. 

When he made a decree for the rain, 

And a way for the lightning of the thunder ; 

Then did he see it and declare it : 

He established it, yea, and searched it out. 

And unto man he said. 

Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is Wisdom j 

And to depart from evil is understanding." ^ 

This is the conclusion to wHcli the author of 
Ecclesiastes comes ; it is the final and only con- 

1 Job xsviii. 1-28. 



258 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

elusion of the Wisdom Literature of tlie Ancient 
Hebrews ; the conchision of a consecrated and de- 
vout agnosticism. It recalls also the conclusion of 
Paul, the Christian analogue of the Ancient He- 
brew wise man : " Now we see truth as in a mirror 
in enigmatical reflections, but then face to face ; 
now I know only from fragments, then shall I 
know thoroughly, even also as I am known. But 
even as things are, there abide faith, hope, love, — 
these three. But the greatest of these is love." ^ 
And when at the close of this monodrama God 
answers Job and his friends out of the whirlwind, 
this is the conclusion which he impresses upon 
them : Nature is full of mystery ; wonder not at 
moral mysteries in life. This is the substance of 
Jehovah's reply to Job and his friends : — 

" I will ask thee ; and inform me thou. 
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? 
Declare if by knowledge thou understandest. 

Hast thou comprehended the breadths of the earth ? 
Tell if thou knowest it all. 

Hast thou visited the treasuries of the snow ? 
And the treasuries of hail hast thou seen them, — 
Which I have reserved for the day of distress ? 

Wilt thou even disannul my right ? 

Wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be justified ? " ^ 

1 1 Cor. xiii. 12, 13. 

2 Job xxxviii. 3, 4, 18, 22, 24 ; xl. 8. John Owen sums up the 
argument very effectively : " If it be granted that all the opera- 
tions of nature and creation which man sees about him are inexpli- 
cable, may not a similar unsearchableness, ex natura rerum, per- 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 259 

To attempt to epitomize the sublime chapters 
which close this poem and in which this lesson is 
illustrated and enforced would be hopeless. The 
reader must turn to his Eevised Version of the 
Bible and read these chapters for himself. Let 
him not, however, fail to note that God condemns 
the three friends whose sophisticated arguments 
have falsified the facts of life in their special plead- 
ing for him, — rather let us say for their own the- 
ology which they have confounded with him, — 
and commends Job in spite of his apparently auda- 
cious irreverence. The poet does not leave us in 
doubt whether his sympathies are with Job or with 
his three friends. 

" Jehovah said to EUphaz the Temanite, My wrath is 
kindled against thee, and against thy two friends : for 
ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right as my 
servant Job hath." ^ 

The epilogue, in which seven sons and three 
daughters were restored to Job as though they 
were raised from the dead, and in which all his 
property is doubled, does not here concern us, ex- 
cept that it constitutes a conclusive demonstration 
that in this book we have presented to us a drama, 
not a history. 

tain to God's dealings with men ? If Job cannot see whence comes 
the rain or determine beforehand the path of the lightning-, may 
not a similar inability extend to others of the divine operations 
in which man's weKare is more especially concerned ? " Five 
Great Skeptical Dramas, p. 154. Mr. Owen's entire treatment of 
Job, and especially his comparison of it with the Prometheus 
Bound, is very suggestive. 
1 Job xlii. 7. 



260 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

There is a philosopliy called Utilitarianism : tlie 
popular thougli crude expression of which is found 
in the phrase, Be virtuous and you will be happy. 
The Book of Job brings this philosophy to the test 
of life : he is virtuous and he is not happy. There 
is a philosophy called Naturalism : it assumes that 
neither is there any divine revelation nor any need 
of one. The Book of Job brings this philosophy 
to the test of life : in sorrow the light of nature 
proves to be a great darkness. There is a philoso- 
phy called Agnosticism : it assumes that God and 
the future life must remain forever unknown to us. 
The Book of Job does not answer this philosophy ; 
but it interprets the anguish of the soul in this 
ignorance by the cry, " Oh that I knew where I 
might find him! " Centuries must pass before the 
Great Unknown of the captivity will bring his 
message to Israel that only by the Suffering Ser- 
vant of Jehovah can Israel be saved ; more centu- 
ries, before the Nazarene will take up his cross and 
bid his followers take up theirs and enter into 
glory through crucifixion ; before his great Apostle 
will declare that he glories in tribulation also ; be- 
fore his beloved disciple will give the world the 
vision of the saints of God redeemed and redeem- 
ing by means of great tribulation ; and many more 
centuries, it seems, must pass before the world can 
understand the lesson, learned so slowly and with 
such difficulty, that suffering is not punitive but re- 
demptive. " In the world," said Christ, "ye shall 
have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have 



A SPIRITUAL TRAGEDY 261 

overcome the world." ^ In the book of Job we see 
the tribulation of an honest heart uncheered by 
this promise of victory. " I am persuaded," said 
Paul, " that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor things present, nor things to 
come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other created thing, shall be able to separate me 
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord." 2 In the Book of Job we see the devout 
and honest soul struggling to hold fast to the love 
of God which life is trying to wrest from him, and 
which has not been authenticated to him by the 
love and life and death of Jesus Christ. 

For in the Book of Job the problem of the ages 
is portrayed in microcosm ; the problem of suffer- 
ing as it has presented itself in all ages to sincere 
souls, conscious of their innocence and not con- 
scious of that call to service through sacrifice 
which the life and passion of Jesus Christ has 
made vocal to all the world. In this ancient 
drama the spiritual tragedy of all the ages is inter- 
preted. In it is the audacious challenge to life of 
a William Ernest Henley : — 

" In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not •winced nor cried aloud ; 
Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody, but unbowed." ^ 

In it is the pathetic counter-pleading against life 
of a Matthew Arnold : — 

1 John xvi. 33. 2 j^om, ^, 33^ 39. 

8 Life and Death (Echoes), iv. 



262 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

" Let us be true 
To one another ! for the world, which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
So various, so beautiful, so new, 
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 
And we are here as on a darkling plain 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
Where ignorant armies clash by night." ^ 

And by it we are conducted to tlie conclusion of 
Alfred Tennyson : — 

" Our little systems have their day ; 

They have their day and cease to be : 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, Lord, art naore than they. 

" We have but faith : we cannot know ; 
For knowledge is of things we see ; 
And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness : let it grow." ^ 

" "We cannot know : " this is the conclusion of the 
Book of Job ; let us be humble and patient, do our 
duty, be true to one another, and wait for the solu- 
tion of life's mystery. Let us realize that charac- 
ter, not happiness, is the end of life, and that if we 
do not serve God for naught we do not serve him 
at all. Let us not aggravate the sufferings of life 
by predicating their injustice ; nor sacrifice our 
loyalty to truth in our endeavor to prove that loy- 
alty to God is reasonable. 

^ Dover Beach ; Poems, 211. 
2 In Memoriam. 



CHAPTER XI 

A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY — I 

Moral teachers may be divided into three 
classes, which may be respectively termed the em- 
pirical, the legal, and the prophetic. The empirical 
teacher observes life, and from his observations de- 
duces certain moral maxims. He perceives that cer- 
tain courses of conduct produce happiness, — these 
he calls right ; certain other courses of conduct pro- 
duce pain, — these he calls wrong. He measures 
conduct by its results, and deduces the principles 
of moral action from his observation of such results. 
These principles find their most common and popu- 
lar expression in such maxims as " Honesty is the 
best policy ; " they are based upon experience and 
observation ; they are often, though by no means 
always, purely prudential ; they are more apt to be 
rules than principles ; and they constitute rather a 
series of practical maxims than a system of theo- 
retical ethics. The legalist is not content with 
these results. He carries his researches further, 
or thinks that he does so. From his observation 
and experience, he deduces certain laws of life, or 
he accepts such laws as promulgated by some au- 
thority, human or divine. These laws of life some- 



264 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

times derive their authority solely from observation 
of their results ; sometimes added authority is given 
to them by their promulgation by the Church or 
the State ; often it is maintained that they are de- 
rived directly or indirectly from God or the gods, 
in which case the supreme authority of a divine 
lawgiver is claimed for them. Virtue consists, ac- 
cording to this school, in obedience to law, human 
or divine; and this obedience is to be rendered 
regardless of possible or probable results ; for 
virtue consists in doing what is commanded, not in 
doing merely what appears to be beneficial. The 
prophetic teacher is not satisfied to stop with the 
discovery of a law, whether that law is human or 
divine. He asks. Why has this law been promul- 
gated ? why has the Church or the State forbidden 
or commanded? why has God forbidden or com- 
manded? And his reply to this inquiry is not 
derived from any observation of the effects of obe- 
dience or disobedience. Virtue he regards not as 
a means to happiness as an end ; it is itself the end. 
It is to be pursued whether it is commanded or 
forbidden ; whether it produces pleasure or pain. 
The prophetic teacher does not think that certain 
conduct is righteous because it produces happiness, 
though he believes that generally happiness follows 
from virtue ; he does not think that it is righteous 
because it is commanded, but that it is commanded 
because it is righteous. Law he regards as inher- 
ent in the nature : the laws of the material universe 
are the nature of matter and force ; the laws of 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 265 

health are the nature of the body ; the laws of God 
are the nature of God ; and these are also the laws 
of man because man is made in the image of God. 
The authority of law is from within ; law is inher- 
ent, eternal, immutable. God is righteous and his 
commands are righteous, but righteousness is not 
created by the commands which define and inter- 
pret it ; the careful observation of life confirms the 
practical wisdom of righteousness in all its various 
applications, but righteousness does not depend on 
the results which proceed from it. The author of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews has given an ancient 
prophet's utterance of this view in the phrase " it 
is impossible for God to lie." F. W. Faber has 
given a modern prophet's utterance of it in the 
verse, — 

" For right is rig-lit, since God is God ; 
And right the day must win : 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 
To falter would be sin." 

The moralists of the eighteenth century and the 
stoics of the first century may be regarded as a 
type of the first school ; the Puritans of the seven- 
teenth century and the nobler spirits among the 
Pharisees of the first century may be regarded as 
a type of the second ; the mystics of all ages and 
the Hebrew prophets of the period before and 
during the exile may be regarded as a type of the 
third. 

Often these schools are critical of and antago- 
nistic to each other. The empiric condemns the 



266 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

legalist as dogmatic, and the prophet as vague and 
mystical; the legalist condenms the empiric as un- 
authoritative and unscientific, and the prophet as 
unauthoritative and mystical; and the prophetic 
teacher condemns the empiric as one who substi- 
tutes prudence for virtue, and the legalist as one 
who substitutes the obedience of fear for the spon- 
taneous life of love. Yet they are not necessarily 
antagonistic except as they are made mutually ex- 
clusive. The religious teacher may believe with 
the prophet that righteousness is inherent in the 
nature of God ; with the legalist that law is more 
than a principle, it is also the expression of the 
righteous will of a righteous God ; and with the 
empiric that the observation and experience of life 
interpret and confirm the intuitive moral percep- 
tion of these divine embodiments of this eternal 
principle. The greatest teachers combine the three 
methods of ascertaining, interpreting, and confirm- 
ing moral truth. When in the Sermon on the 
Mount Christ gives to his disciples the counsel, 
" Agree with thine adversary quickly whiles thou 
art in the way with him; lest at any time the 
adversary deliver thee to the judge and the judge 
deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into 
prison," he commends the pacific disposition by a 
purely prudential motive derived from an observa- 
tion of the facts of life ; ^ when he says : " I say 

^ " Lest the adversary deliver thee to the judge." " This part 
is explained by some in a metaphorical sense, that the Heavenly 
Judge will act toward us with the utmost rig-or, so as to forgive 



A 8CH00L OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 267 

unto you, " Swear not at all ; neither by heaven, for 
it is God's throne ; nor by the earth, for it is his 
footstool ; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city 
of the Great King," he promulgates a definite law, 
and bases it not on the experience of life, but on 
the authority of the conscience and the reason in- 
terpreting the laws of God; and when he says, 
" Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do 
good to them that hate you, and pray for them that 
despitef ully use you and persecute you, that ye may 
be the children of your Father which is in heaven," 
he enunciates a divine principle of righteousness 
which inheres in the nature of God, and of man as 
the child of God, made in God's image, dependent 
for its authority neither on the results which it 
produces, nor on the will of the lawgiver who for- 
mulates it, but on its own inherent, eternal, abso- 
lute rightfulness. 

All three of these voices, that of the empiric, 
that of the legalist, and that of the prophet or in- 
tuitionalist, are found in the Old Testament. The 
Book of Job may be taken as the voice of the 
prophet. Job will pay no reverence to Jehovah if 
Jehovah be not righteous. Righteousness of char- 
acter, that is, conformity to the eternal principles 

us nothing, if we do not labor to settle those differences which 
we have with our neighbors. But I view it more simply, as 
an admonition that, even among men, it is usually advantageous 
for us to come to an early agreement with adversaries, because, 
with quarrelsome persons, their obstinacy often costs them dear." 
Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and 
Luke, by John Calvin, vol. i. p. 288. 



268 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

of justice, is the only ground of authority which 
he will recognize. The Hebrew code may be re- 
garded as the voice of the legalist : its message is 
summed up in the words, " If ye will obey my voice 
and keep my covenant, then shall ye be a peculiar 
treasure unto me above all people : " all virtue is 
summed up in obedience to a supreme, a divine 
King. The voice of the empiric, who derives 
moral maxims from an observation of life, and 
commends them by their practical results as seen 
in life, is chiefly interpreted in two books, — the 
Book of Proverbs and the Book of Ecclesiastes. 
As the Levitical code is the expression of the re- 
ligious life as interpreted by the priesthood ; as 
the Deuteronomic code is the expression of that 
life as interpreted by the statesmen ; as the Book 
of Psalms is the expression of that life as inter- 
preted by the lyric poets ; as the Books of Amos, 
Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah are perhaps the sublim- 
est expression of that life as interpreted by the in- 
tuitionalists or prophets, so the Books of Proverbs 
and of Ecclesiastes are the expression of that life 
as interpreted by the Wise Men.^ These Wise 
Men constituted no order, as did the priests ; they 
did not profess to have received a special divine 
call, as did the prophets ; rarely if ever do they 
claim to speak in the name or on behalf of Jeho- 
vah ; but they did constitute an unorganized and 

1 For an excellent account of this school see The Wise Men of 
Ancient Israel and their Proverbs, by C. T. Kent, Ph. D., pp. 17- 
31. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 269 

undefined school of tliought ; their analogue in our 
times is to be found in the equally inorganic School 
of Ethical Culture. 

Proverbs are the coined experience of a people. 
The maker of a proverb is not one who has seen 
deeply into the inward nature of things; he is 
not a poet, nor one who has a clear apprehension 
of great laws ; he is not a philosopher : the maker 
of a proverb is one who has a keen observation of 
the actual phenomena of life, and has been able to 
put the result of his observation into a single sen- 
tence so that it flashes light like a diamond. The 
Book of Proverbs is the experience of the Hebrew 
people coined into current aphorisms by men of 
native wit. These proverbs are not written by 
men of remarkable spiritual vision ; nor by men 
notable for their clear vision of great laws, whether 
discovered by philosophical inquiry or divinely re- 
vealed ; they are aphorisms which have been struck 
out of human experience by the attrition of life, 
have received concise interpretation in compact 
sentences, and have passed current among the peo- 
ple. Such a book can have no author ; rather it 
has many authors, though it may have one editor. 
No man can with deliberate purpose sit down to 
write proverbs. One man once made the endeavor, 
but since Martin Farquar Tupper's "Proverbial 
Philosophy " no man has repeated the experiment. 
The book is called in our Bible " The Proverbs of 
Solomon," not because he wrote them, nor because 
he gathered them together, but because he was one 



270 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

of the first men of the Hebrew nation to take this 
utilitarian, this prudential, this ethical-culture view 
of life and put it into proverbs. He was perhaps 
the very first ; others, inspired by his thinking, 
produced other proverbs ; these were from time to 
time gathered into various collections, and these 
various collections were finally brought together 
in the general collection now known as the Book 
of Proverbs. 

There is therefore in this book no unity .^ It is 
simply a collection of aphorisms which have been 
formulated by the wise moralists among the He- 
brews and which have passed current in the Hebrew 
nation. This character of the book is indicated 
by its title-page : — 

" The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of 
Israel ; To know wisdom and instruction ; to perceive 
the words of understanding ; To receive the instruction 
of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity ; To give 
subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge 
and discretion. A wise man will hear, and will increase 
learning ; and a man of understanding shall attain unto 
wise counsels ; To understand a proverb, and the inter- 
pretation : the words of the wise, and their dark say- 
mgs. ^ 

^ For an admirable presentation of the Proverbs as collections 
of collections and in their difEerent literary form as sonnets, riddles, 
separate aphorisms, etc., see The Modern Beader^s Bible : The 
Proverbs, by R. G. Moulton. For an elaborate interpretation of 
the book from the other point of view, as spiritual and pro- 
phetic, and in a sense Messianic, see A Commentary on the Pro- 
verbs with a New Translation, by John Miller. 

2 Prov. i. 1-6. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 271 

Here is not a word said about the law of God, nor 
about revelation from bim. The object of the 
book is simply to give practical wisdom by giving 
practical understanding of the experiences of life. 
As such it is to be read. 

We are not, then, to look in the Book of Proverbs 
for a system of philosophy or theology. Theology 
is the science of religion, and the Book of Proverbs 
is not scientific. It contains no religious creed, 
and nothing suggesting one ; no ethical system and 
no hint that any such system was in the mind of 
the authors or the editor. It contains no hint of 
what are called the great doctrines of Christianity, 
such as trinity, revelation, inspiration, divine sov- 
ereignty, and the like ; no systematic counsels for 
the conduct of life, such as we find in the Sermon 
on the Mount. Separated instructions, fragments 
of wisdom, coined results of experience, — these are 
what are presented, and without system, deliber- 
ately and intentionally without system. The book 
never refers to Israel as the chosen people of God ; 
contains no suggestion of a coming Messiah, — the 
great hope of Israel ; and no revelation of the im- 
mortality of the soul. It contains five incidental re- 
ferences to sacrifices ; ^ but none to Temple or Tab- 
ernacle or priesthood or Levitical code ; and none 
to the Mosaic moral code. Its reference to the law 
is to the moral law as interpreted by the reason 
and the conscience ; its sanctions are in the main 
found, not in any supreme obligation to obey 

1 Prov. vii. 14 ; xv. 8 ; xvii. 1 ; xxi. 3, 27. 



272 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Jehovah, but in the consequences which follow in 
this life, upon obedience and disobedience, that is, 
upon temporal and prudential considerations. 

The contrast between the prophetic and the pro- 
verbial method in the treatment of life is brought 
out clearly by the contrast between two poems 
covering the same ground, — one in the Book of 
Psalms, the other in the Book of Proverbs. They 
might well be given the same title, " The Two 
Paths." The poet's description of the two paths 
in the First Psalm is as follows : — 

" Blessed is the man that walketh not m the counsel of the wicked, 
Nor standeth in the way of sinners, 
Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 
But his delight is in the law of the Lord ; 
And in his law doth he meditate day and night. 
And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, 
That bringeth forth its fruit in its season, 
Whose leaf also doth not wither ; 
And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. 
The wicked are not so ; 

But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. 
Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment. 
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. 
For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous : 
But the way of the wicked shall perish." 

That is a poet's interpretation of life, figurative in 
phraseology, ideal in spirit, written by one whose 
conception of life is derived from his conception of 
what life ought to be because his faith in a just 
God makes him sure that what ought to be will be. 
The other poem on the two paths, in the fourth 
chapter of Proverbs beginning at the tenth verse, 
reads as follows : — 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 273 

** Hear, my son, and receive my sayings ; 
And the years of thy life shall be many. 
I have taught thee in the way of wisdom ; 
I have led thee in paths of uprightness. 
When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened ; 
And if thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble. 
Take fast hold of instruction ; let her not go: 
Keep her ; for she is thy life. 
Enter not into the path of the wicked, 
And walk not in the way of evil men. 
Avoid it, pass not by it ; 
Turn from it, and pass on. 

For they sleep not, except they have done mischief ; 
And their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to falL 
For they eat the bread of wickedness. 
And drink the wine of violence. 
But the path of the righteous is as the shining light, 
That shineth more and more unto the perfect day. 
The way of the wicked is as darkness : 
They know not at what they stumble." 

Here there is no figurative language: no tree 
growing beside the still waters, no leaf not wither- 
ing, no chaff blown away by the wind ; all is plain, 
simple, prosaic, — a description of life as the au- 
thor has actually seen it. 

This view of the Book of Proverbs is important, 
because a very different interpretation has often 
been given to the book, and a misunderstanding 
has resulted therefrom. Men have taken this book 
as though it were written by prophets ; as though 
it contained a system of theology ; as though it 
even embodied a prophetic revelation of the law 
and the Gospels of the New Testament ; instead 
of being what it is, simply a mirror held up to 
human life. Many readers will probably recall 



274 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

sermons preached upon the following passage as 
though it were a portraiture of God's treatment of 
the too-late repentant sinner : — 

" How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity ? 
And scomers delight them in scorning. 
And fools hate knowledge ? 
Turn yon at my reproof : 
Behold, I will ponr out my spirit nnto you, 
I will make known my words unto you. 
Because I have called, and ye refused ; 
I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded ; 
But ye have set at nought all my counsel. 
And would none of my reproof : 
I also will laugh in the day of your calamity ; 
I will mock when your fear cometh ; 
When your fear cometh as a storm. 
And your calamity cometh on as a whirlwind ; 
When distress and anguish come upon you. 
Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; 
They shall seek me diligently, but they shall not find me. " ^ 

Who is speaking? Jehovah? The God who 
sent his own Son into the world that he might save 
men who rejected him ? The God depicted in the 
parable of the prodigal son as coming forth to 
meet the boy who has thrown away his life, and by 
ungrudging mercy to bring him back to manhood 
again ? Is it this Father who says, " I will laugh 
at their calamity, . . . they shall call upon me, but 
I will not answer ? " No ! not Jehovah ! — wisdom I 
This is a picture of life as the author has actually 
seen it, as we have all seen it. The young man 
had wise counsels ; he was told that if he went on 
in his present career he would bring evil on him- 

1 Prov. i. 22-28. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 275 

self. But he was headstrong, he was wiser than 
his father, he would take his own course, he has 
taken it, he has ruined himself, he is dishonored 
and disgraced in his own eyes and in the eyes of 
all men. And now these counsels of the past come 
flocking about him like ghosts, taunting him and 
saying to him, I told you so. His father may not 
say so; his mother may not say so; if they are 
wise, they will not, but life says so. And then, 
while all these ghosts of the wisdom of the past are 
repeating to him the story of his folly, while they 
are scourging him with whips like scorpions, then 
comes to him the voice of Jehovah as it is inter- 
preted by the idealist : — 

" Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, caU ye 
upon him while he is near ; let the wicked forsake his 
way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts : and let him 
return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him ; 
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For 
my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your 
ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are 
higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your 
ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." ^ 

The reason for the difference between the first 
chapter of Proverbs and the fifty-fifth chapter of 
Isaiah is that the writer of Proverbs shows forth 
the thoughts of man, while the prophet shows 
forth the thoughts of God, and God's thoughts are 
not our thoughts, neither are his ways our ways. 
And when this experience of our own folly rises 
1 Isa. Iv. 6-9. 



276 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

up to taunt US, this voice of divine forgiveness 
summons us from ourselves to him ; the answer to 
Proverbs is in Isaiah ; the refuge from the mocking 
voice of human wisdom is turning from ourselves 
to him whose ways are higher than our ways and 
his thoughts than our thoughts. 

The Book of Proverbs contains a great number 
of single aphorisms. It is in vain to look for any 
connection between them, for there is no connec- 
tion. They are not even classified according to 
subjects. They cover a large range of human ex- 
perience. They are observant, shrewd, keen-edged, 
often humorous, more often satirical. " The Pro- 
verbs," says Professor W. J. Beecher of Auburn 
Theological Seminary,^ " are remarkably rich in 
humor, though this is a fact which most readers 
fail to appreciate, by reason of our accustomed 
solemn way of looking at everything in the Bible ; " 
a sentence worth consideration by those who think 
it irreverent to find occasion for merriment in a 
book which explicitly declares that " a merry heart 
is a good medicine." ^ Three examples of this 
humor will suffice to illustrate this characteristic 
of the collection. 

" Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble 
Is a broken tooth and a foot out of joint." ^ 

You relied on your tooth to feed you; it is 

1 The Bible as Literature, p. 119. The chapter in this volume 
on the Wisdom Literature by Professor Beecher is an admirable 
sketch of its salient characteristics. 

2 Prov. xvii. 22. Compare xv. 13, 15. 
^ Prov. XXV. 19. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 277 

broken, and every movement gives you a twinge of 
pain; you relied on your foot to carry you; at 
every step you limp, or you halt altogether. Such 
is the friend you relied upon to stand by you in 
trouble and who when the trouble came left you 
in the lurch. 

" He that passeth by and vexeth himseK with strife belonging not 
to him 
Is like one that taketh a dog by the ears." ^ 

Why ? Because when one has once gotten an ugly 
dog by the ears one cannot let go. Analogous to 
this is the Chinese proverb : " Eiding the tiger — 
hard riding, but you cannot get off." 

" A continual dropping in a very rainy day 
And a contentious woman are alike : 
He that would restrain her restraineth the wind, 
And his right hand encoimtereth oil." ^ 

He cannot stop her ; and if he tries to do it, she 
slips out from under him and begins again in the 
same strain. 

But this Book of Proverbs contains not only 
single aphorisms ; it also contains odes, sonnets, 
riddles, life portraits : in one respect only like the 
single aphorisms, — they are drawn from the obser- 
vation and experience of life. 

RIDDLES. 

" For three things the earth doth tremble, 
And for four things which it cannot bear." 

What are they ? 

1 Prov. xxvi. 17. 2 proy, ^xvii. 15, 16. 



278 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

" For a servant when he is king ; 
And a fool when he is filled with meat ; 
For an odious woman when she is married ; 
And for an handmaid that is heir to her mistress." ^ 

" There be four things which are little upon the earth, 
But they are exceeding wise." 

What are they ? 

" The ants are a people not strong ; 
Yet they provide their meat in the summer; 
The conies are hut a feeble folk, 
Yet make they their houses in the rocks ; 
The locusts have no king, 
Yet they go forth all of them by bands ; 
The lizard thou canst seize with thy hands, 
Yet is she in kings' palaces." ^ 

These hardly seem to us like riddles, but they have 
the same quality : a question or comparison ; the 
answer concealed for a moment, and then given. 

There are Meissonier pictures : minute, graphic, 
realistic, unromantic, unimaginative, — pictures 
drawn not by Fancy, but by Observation. 

THE PROSPEROUS FAKMEB. 

" Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, 
And look well to thy herds : 
For riches are not forever ; 

And doth the crown endure unto all generations ? 
The hay is carried, 
And the tender grass showeth itself, 
And the herbs of the mountains are gathered in. 
The lambs are for thy clothing. 
And the goats for the price of the field : 
And there will be goats' milk enough for thy food. 
For the food of thy household ; 
And maintenance for thy maidens." ^ 

1 Prov. XXX. 21-23. ^ ppov. xxx. 24-28. 

2 Prov. xxvii. 23-27. For other illustrations of this pictorial 



A 8CH00L OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 279 
With it contrast : — 

THE UNPROSPEROUS FARMER. 

" I went by the field of the slothful, 
And by the vineyard of the man void of understanding ; 
And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, 
And the face thereof was covered with nettles, 
And the stone wall thereof was broken down. 
Then I beheld, and considered well : 
I saw, and received instruction. 
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, 
A little folding of the hands to sleep : 
So shall thy poverty come as a robber ; 
And thy want as an armed man." ^ 

Not only there is no theology in the Book of 
Proverbs, that is, no system of divine truth ; there 
is also no ethical system ; truth is not taught in a 
system. But the ethical standard is high. "Its 
maxims," says Professor Toy, "all look to the 
establishment of a safe, peaceful, happy social life 
in the family and the community." ^ These pro- 
verbs commend the common virtues, and denounce 
or satirize the common vices of mankind, but they 
do not bring to bear upon the reader the highest 

realism, see The Tippler, chapter xxiii. 24-35, and The Virtuous 
Woman, chapter xxxi. 10-31. 

1 Prov. xxiv. 30-34. 

2 Professor Toy deduces a very simple theology from the Book 
of Proverbs, but it is avowedly his deduction from the book, not 
the deduction from life by the author or editor of the book. This 
theology includes the following : Monotheism is taken for granted ; 
sin is the violation of law ; salvation, which is deliverance from 
earthly evil, is secured by obedience to law ; there is no judgment 
after death, and the future of men in Sheol has no relation to 
moral character. The International Critical Commentary : The 
Book of Proverbs, by Crawford H. Toy, Introduction, pp. xv., xvi. 



280 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

motives ; they do not urge obligation to obey law 
because it is the law of God, nor because it is abso- 
lutely and eternally just and right, nor even be- 
cause it promotes the general welfare ; but because 
obedience will promote the well-being of the obedi- 
ent. The spirit of the book is not idealistic ; not 
that of loyalty to Jehovah, nor that of obedience 
to conscience, nor that of regard for others; it 
is prudential. The book never antagonizes the 
higher motives ; it is entirely consistent with them ; 
but it does not appeal to them. It deals with the 
relations of man to his fellow man, it deduces the 
maxims respecting these relations from experience 
of life, not from a revealed will of God, nor from 
an inward witness of the conscience. The maxims 
which it thus commends are consonant with those 
which law as interpreted by the legalist and life as 
interpreted by the idealist commend ; but it does 
not formulate any great principles or laws of moral 
life ; it is a book of maxims based upon experience. 
In general the basis of these maxims is univer- 
sal experience. In this respect Hebrew proverbs 
are unlike those of other nationalities. Proverbs, 
being based on experience, are often provincial 
in tone ; they take on their form, if they do not 
derive their ethical character, from the peculiar 
circumstances of the nation which has given them 
birth. Thus it is Germany, land of the Reforma- 
tion, that coins the proverb, " God's friend is the 
priest's foe ; " Germany, the land that abounds 
with beer, that produces the proverb, " More men 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 281 

are drowned in the bowl than are drowned in the 
sea ; " and it is in Germany, which requires a new 
discovery in order to confer a Ph. D., that the 
people have coined the proverb, " Always some- 
thing new, seldom something good." We cross 
the border and come into Italy; it is in Italy, 
land of the bandits, that the proverb appears, " To 
him who can take what thou hast, give what he 
asks ; " it is Italy, land of the siesta, that coins the 
proverb, " First get a good name, then go to 
sleep ; " it is Italy, land of treachery, poisons, and 
assassinations, that coins the proverbs, " Even 
woods have ears " and " Even among the Apostles 
there was a Judas." Cross the border again and 
come into France ; it is France, one of whose 
writers said that England had twenty religions 
and only one sauce, that coins the proverb, " For 
wolf's flesh, dog sauce ; " France, where men rarely 
go to church and still more rarely absent them- 
selves from the table, that coins the proverb, *' A 
short mass and a long dinner." In Holland, sturdy 
land of thrift, the proverbs appear, " Persever- 
ance brings success ; " " Every day a thread makes 
a skein in the year ; " " Biding makes thriving." 
In Armenia, where no man knows whether what 
he owns belongs to him or not, the proverb is 
coined, " He feeds the hen with one hand, and 
takes her egg with the other ; " in Armenia, where 
men have lived long under the terror of the Turk, 
appears the proverb, " The wolf knows no reckon- 
ing;" in Armenia, land of dishonesty because of 



282 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

cruelty under oppression, runs the proverb, " I do 
not want it, put it in my pocket." This provin- 
cial character of proverbs receives striking illus- 
tration in the transformation which proverbs some- 
times undergo in passing from one country to an- 
other. Thus the English proverb, " A May flood 
never did good " becomes in southern Spain and 
Italy " Water in May is bread for all the year ; " 
and the English proverb " Dry August and warm 
does harvest no harm " is converted in Spain into 
"When it rains in August it rains honey and 
wine." 

In the Hebrew proverbs there is nothing pro- 
vincial and little or nothing distinctively Hebraic. 
They seem to belong neither to the race nor to the 
age, but to be expressions of a universal experi- 
ence. Literature is the expression of life : there- 
fore the greater the life expressed, the greater the 
literature. The essay, poem, or drama which repre- 
sents simply a provincial and temporary phase of 
life, in a provincial dialect, belongs to the lowest 
class ; that which represents the characteristic life 
of its age belongs in the second class ; that which 
represents universal experience, that of all men in 
all ages, — a Homer, a Dante, a Shakespeare, — 
belongs in the highest class. It is one character- 
istic of the proverbs of the Hebrew people that 
they are expressions of universal experience, appli- 
cable to America in the twentieth century scarcely 
less than to the Hebrew people in the fifth century 
before Christ. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 283 

There is no cynicism in the Hebrew proverbs. 
The Hebrew satirizes the unfaithful friend, but 
his experience of a friend's unfaithfulness does 
not make him skeptical concerning friendship. 
Contrast with the cynical proverb of the French : 
" God save me from the friends I trust in," or of 
the Spanish, " A reconciled friend is a double 
enemy," with the carefully defined comparison of 
an unfaithful friend to a broken tooth. The He- 
brew satirizes the contentious woman, but nowhere 
does he treat woman with the cynical contempt of 
Pope : " Every woman is at heart a rake ; " no- 
where do we find in this collection of Hebrew pro- 
verbs the contempt for woman's intelligence ex- 
pressed in the old English proverb " When an ass 
climbs a ladder one may find wisdom in women." 
On the contrary, it would be difficult to find in 
literature a more appreciative portraiture of the 
faithful housewife than in the last chapter of Pro- 
verbs ; I say housewife^ for the portrait is not, and 
does not profess to be, an ideal ; there are no ideals 
in the Book of Proverbs ; it is a realistic picture 
of an industrious woman at her housewifely work 
for her husband and her children ; not a " Dream 
of Fair Women," not a Raphael's Madonna, but 
a Dutch artist's photographic reproduction from 
daily life, a Mrs. Primrose in the " Yicar of Wake- 
field " ; common, prosaic, realistic, but not cynical. 
Nowhere in the Book of Proverbs do we find aph- 
orisms analogous to these taken, almost at random^ 
from modern collections : ■ — 



284 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

" We all have strength enough to bear other people's 
troubles." 

" The poorhouses are filled with the honestest peo- 
ple." 

" The worst pig gets the best acorn." 
" No camel ever sees his own hump." 
" Gratitude is a lively sense of favors to come." 
" Repentance is fear of ill yet to come upon us." 
" Love of justice is the fear of suffering injustice." 
" The public ! How many fools does it take to make 
the pubUc ? " 

" Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people 
who do not know you." 

Cynicism involves contempt for man and gener- 
ally contempt for the common virtues, and neither 
contempt for man nor contempt for the common 
virtues is to be found in the Book of Proverbs. 
Even the satire of the Hebrew Proverbs is a kindly 
satire ; they are pervaded by a spirit of cheerful- 
ness and good-fellowship ; they are keyed to a 
high standard of ethics ; among them are maxims 
which in their spirit suggest, though they do not 
equal, those of the New Testament. Compare, for 
example, these counsels of the Hebrew wise men 
with the later counsel of Christ. They are almost 
identical, not only in the advice given, but in 
the prudential foundation on which the advice is 
based. 

THE HEBREW WISE MAN. 

" Put not thyself forward in the presence of the king 
And stand not in the place of great men : 
For better it is that it be said nnto thee, Come up hither ; 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 285 

Than that thou shotddest be put lower in the presence of the 

prince, 
Whom thine eyes have seen." ^ 

CHRIST. 

" When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit 
not down in the highest room, lest a more honorable 
man than thou be bidden of him. And he that bade 
thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place ; 
and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. 
But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the low- 
est room ; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may 
say unto thee, Friend, go up higher ; then shalt thou 
have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat 
with thee." ^ 

Or again compare the ethical instruction of Paul 
with that of the Book of Proverbs from which he 
quotes it : — 

PROVERBS. 

" If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat ; 
And if he be thirsty, give him water to drink : 
For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, 
And the Lord shall reward thee." ^ 

PAUL. 

" Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather 
give place unto wrath : for it is written. Vengeance is 
mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine 
enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink : 
for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his 
head." * 

1 Prov. XXV. 6, 7. 2 Lute xiv. 8-10. 

« Prov. XXV. 21, 22. * Rom. xii. 20. 



286 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

The counsel is the same ; but the "Wise Man in the 
Proverbs promises a reward to those who follow it ; 
Paul promises nothing; and Christ who calls to 
his followers to give a like treatment to their ene- 
mies, summons to love as well as to service, and 
for motive appeals to the highest aspiration of the 
soul : " That ye may be the children of your Father 
which is in heaven." ^ 

God speaks to us with many voices. To men 
whose conscience is alert he speaks through law, 
saying : " I am the Lord thy God ; thou shalt have 
no other gods before me ; " to the men whose imag- 
ination is receptive he speaks through poetry, 
declaring that in his temple everything saith 
" Glory ; " to the man of broad observation he 
speaks in history, showing in the course of Israel's 
history how Jehovah is revealed in his dealing 
with the sons of men ; to the man who is a cere- 
monialist he speaks through the Levitical code, 
pointing out justice on the one hand and mercy on 
the other ; and to the man whose horizon is limited 
by this world, who has no clear hope beyond the 
grave and no clear vision of the Eternal Father, 
he speaks through the Book of Proverbs, saying 
in effect : If there were no God, and if there were 
no life to come, still sin would be f oUy and virtue 
would be wisdom. 

1 Matt. V. 43-48. 



CHAPTER XII 

A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY — II 

The Book of Ecclesiastes is like the Book of 
Proverbs in that it is an interpretation of life from 
the point of view of experience ; ^ it differs from 

1 The difficulties which attend the interpretation of the Book 
of Ecclesiastes are illustrated by the following summary of opin- 
ions which have been expressed respecting it by different scholars : 
" We are positively assured that the book contains the holy lamen- 
tations of Solomon, together with a prophetic vision of the split- 
ting up of the royal house of David, the destruction of the temple, 
and the captivity ; and we are equally assured that it is a discus- 
sion between a refined sensualist and a sober sage. Solomon pub- 
lishes it in his repentance, to glorify God and to strengthen his 
brethren ; he wrote it when he was irreligious and skeptical dur- 
ing his amours and idolatry. The Messiah, the true Solomon, 
who was known by the title of son of David, addresses this book 
to the saints ; a profligate who wanted to disseminate his infa- 
mous sentiments palmed it upon Solomon. It teaches us to de- 
spise the world with all its pleasures and flee to monasteries ; it 
shows that sensual gratifications are men's greatest blessing upon 
earth. It is a philosophic lecture delivered to a literary society 
upon topics of the greatest moment ; it is a medley of heteroge- 
neous fragments belonging to various authors and different ages. 
It describes the beautiful order of God's moral government, show- 
ing that all things work together for good to them that love the 
Lord ; it proves that all is disorder and confusion and that the 
world is the sport of chance. It is a treatise on the summum bo- 
num ; it is a chronicle of the lives of the kings of the house of 
David from Solomon down to Zedekiah. Its object is to prove 
the immortality of the soul ; its design is to deny a future exist- 



288 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

the Book of Proverbs in that it is by a single 
author, who interprets life chiefly from the point 
of view of a single experience, that of King Solo- 
mon. 

All modern or literary students of the Bible 
are agreed that Solomon is not the author of the 
book.i The fact that in its title-page ^ authorship 
is attributed to " the Preacher, the Son of David, 
King in Jerusalem," is not conclusive. That cer- 

ence. Its aim is to comfort the unhappy Jews in their misfor- 
tunes ; and its sole purport is to pour forth the gloomy imagina- 
tions of a melancholy misanthrope. It is intended to ' open 
Nathan's speech (1 Chron. xviii.) touching the eternal throne of 
David,' and it propounds by anticipation the modem discoveries 
of anatomy and the Harveian theory of the circulation of the 
blood. It foretells what will become of man or angels to eternity, 
and, according to one of the latest and greatest authorities, it is a 
keen satire on Herod, written 8 B. c, when the king cast his son 
Alexander into prison." C. D. Ginsburg : Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica, article Ecclesiastes. The student will find the material for a 
careful study of the Book of Ecclesiastes in Dr. Samuel Cox's 
Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Expositor's Bible; in Dean Plump- 
tre on Ecclesiastes, The Cambridge Bible ; in Professor Moul- 
ton's view of Ecclesiastes as given in the Modern Beader's Bible ; 
and in Dean Stanley's interpretation of Ecclesiastes in his Lectures 
on the Jewish Church, vol. ii. pp. 282-287. 

1 For a clear statement of the grounds on which this considera- 
tion is based see Professor Moulton's Modern Reader's Bible, Ec- 
clesiastes, Introduction, § 1 ; Plumptre's Commentary on Ecclesi- 
astes, The Cambridge Bible, Introduction, pp. 19-34; Driver's 
Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 465-478. 
The arguments are chiefly two : first, that the language and style 
are not those of the Solomonic era ; second, that Solomon's reign 
was one of great material prosperity, while the Book of Ecclesi- 
astes assumes a condition of national adversity under cruel foreign 
oppression. 

2 Eccles. i. 1. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 289 

tainly means Solomon ; but in all ages it has been 
customary for men to write in the name of some 
other character, real or fictitious. Such writing is 
not fraudulent, unless the object of the writer is to 
palm off a false name upon his readers in order 
to secure for his writing a false authority. In this 
case there certainly is no such endeavor by the 
author to secure divine authority for his book, for 
the experience portrayed is anything but a divine 
experience. No one charges Robert Browning with 
fraud because in the " Death in the Desert " he 
puts his own sentiments into the mouth of the 
dying Apostle John. In some such manner a poet, 
probably of the fourth century before Christ, took 
Solomon as a vehicle for the expression of a cer- 
tain interpretation of life. But though Solomon 
did not write this prose-poem, in interpreting it 
we may make use of our knowledge of Solomon, as 
our understanding of the character of King John 
will help us to understand Shakespeare's play of 
that name. What sort of character, then, was Solo- 
mon, and what sort of experience of life would a 
poet attribute to him ? 

Solomon, more than any other man in Old 
Testament history, represents that complexity of 
character which Paul has so graphically described 
in the seventh chapter of Romans. He was brought 
up by religious parents ; had a religious training ; 
was familiar with the law of God and with the 
ritual of the Temple ; his conscience was educated 
by the law, his reverence by the ritual. But when 



290 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

he came to full age and the possession of power and 
wealth he departed from his religious training and 
became the great sensualist of Israeli tish history. 
The description of the splendor of his court, given 
in the Books of Kings and Chronicles, is paralleled 
by the historical accounts of the analogously cor- 
rupt splendor of the reign of Louis XIY. in France. 
He built a magnificent palace ; his throne was of 
ivory ; his dishes were gold ; silver, it is said, was 
nothing accounted of ; he had all the sensual plea- 
sures of an Oriental court, — men singers and 
women singers and dancers ; he had a great retinue 
of servants ; at his table, it is said, there were daily 
consumed thirty oxen, one hundred sheep, and quan- 
tities of game. The accuracy of the figures does 
not concern us ; there is no reason to doubt the 
accuracy of the picture which they convey. He 
introduced the harem, and the sensual worship of 
pagan gods ; and this latter carried with it, in 
both social and religious life, the imitation of 
pagan ideals. It was his ambition, not only to ape 
but to rival other contemporaneous empires. Yet 
with it all he maintained a certain intellectual 
glory. Trained in religion, possessing an educated 
conscience, and surrounding himself with a bar- 
baric and sensual splendor, he was far famed for 
his wisdom. He was a coiner of proverbs ; from 
his reign, apparently, dates the beginning of what 
is known as the Wisdom Literature of the Old 
Testament. When the Queen of Sheba, attracted 
by the fame of his splendor, came to see him, she 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 291 

came, it is said, to try him with hard questions. 
What they were we are not told, but she was satis- 
fied with the shrewdness of his answers. It is such 
a man as this, with these contradictory and conflict- 
ing elements, — a religious training, an educated 
conscience, a sensual and self-indulgent nature, and 
a philosophic mind dealing with the actualities of 
life and trying to understand the riddle of exist- 
ence, — that the poet who wrote the Book of Eccle- 
siastes chose for his mouthpiece. He imagines 
Solomon musing over the problem of life ; reflect- 
ing upon wealth, sensual pleasure, gratified ambi- 
tion, philosophic wisdom, and what these bring ; 
and while this meditative musing on the varied ex- 
periences of life is going on, there break in upon 
him from time to time the memory of his child- 
hood's instruction, the sanctions of God's law, the 
protest of his own conscience, and reflections sug- 
gested by his faith in the righteousness of God and 
a future judgment. 

Thus the Book of Ecclesiastes is a dramatic 
monologue portraying the complicated experiences 
of life ; these voices are conflicting, but they por- 
tray the conflict of a single soul at war with itself. 
In this monologue the man is represented as argu- 
ing with himself ; weighing the contrasted experi- 
ences of life over against one another.^ A philoso- 

1 " As the Book of Job is couched in the form of a dramatic 
argument bet-ween the Patriarch and his friends, as the Song of 
Songs is a dramatic dialogue between the Lover and his Beloved 
One, so the Book of Ecclesiastes is a drama of a still more tragic 



292 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

plier would take these problems in order ; he would 
consider first the value of pleasure, then that of 
ambition, then that of wisdom, etc., and finally he 
would draw from this orderly and consecutive con- 
sideration a logical conclusion as to life's teaching. 
The interpreter of Ecclesiastes, translating it into 
an orderly and philosophical form, is obliged to do 
this. But the writer of Ecclesiastes is not a philo- 
sopher ; he is a poet interpreting human experience. 
And it is not in such well ordered thinking our 
experiences are fashioned within us. On the con- 

kmd. It is an interchange of voices, higher and lower, mournful 
and joyful, within a single human soul. It is like the struggle 
between the two principles in the Epistle to the Romans. It is 
like the question and answer of the ' Two Voices ' of our modern 
poet. It is like the perpetual strophe and antistrophe of Pascal's 
Pensees. But it is more complicated, more entangled, than any 
of these, in proportion as the circumstances from which it grows 
are more perplexing, as the character which it represents is vaster 
and grander, and more distracted. Every speculation and thought 
of the human heart is heard, and expressed, and recognized in 
turn. The conflicts which in other parts of the Bible are confined 
to a single verse or a single chapter are here expanded to a whole 
book." The History of the Jewish Church, by Arthur Penrhyn 
Stanley, D. D,, Lecture xxviii. pp. 282, 283. — Dean Plumptre 
suggests another parallel to Ecclesiastes in the 144th sonnet of 
Shakespeare : — 

" Two loves I have of comfort and despair 
Which, like two spirits, do suggest me still. 
The better angel is a man right fair, 
The worser spirit a woman colored ill. 
To win me soon to hell, my female evil 
Tempteth my better angel from my side, 
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, 
Wooing his purity with her foul pride." 

Ecclesiastes, The Cambridge Bible, Introduction by E. H. Plump- 
tre, D. D., p. 43. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 293 

trary, thoughts come tumultuously into our mind ; 
they fight their battle out within our consciousness ; 
ambition, sensuality, wisdom, conscience, — all con- 
tend for the mastery. There are no parliamentary 
laws in the human soul, and no one to keep order, — 
first one voice speaks, and then another ; they shout 
against one another, they drown one another. Thus 
the Book of Ecclesiastes is deliberately and of in- 
tention confused, because it is the portrayal of the 
confused experiences of a soul divided against itself. 
This confusion is enhanced by one literary charac- 
teristic. The writer has told us, in the last chap- 
ter, that he has sought out proverbs ; that is, ranged 
over literature to get apothegms that will throw 
light upon the problem which he is considering. 
These proverbs, familiar in his time, are inserted 
in the dramatic monologue ; in our time they would 
be put in quotation marks, with a footnote to say 
where they had come from. But there were no 
quotation marks at that time, and the proverbs are 
incorporated in the body of the text. How much 
of the book is gathered from a wide range of liter- 
ature and how much is original with the writer, we 
do not know ; but at times there are literary breaks 
in the order which may fairly be attributed to quo- 
tations, more or less apt. 

"We are then to imagine a man with religious 
training, an educated conscience, an apostate life, 
who has tried the various phases of self-seeking, — 
sensuality, philosophy, ambition, — and has under- 
taken to transcribe the results of his experiences. 



294 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

The product is a journal of fragments, in tliis 
respect analogous to Amiel's Journal. After an 
introduction giving general expression to his spirit 
of pessimistic fatalism, the poet records the experi- 
ences which wealth and self-indulgence bring. He 
pictures the king as throwing himself with a certain 
abandon into a life of self-indulgent luxury, and 
yet remaining, as it were, outside of himself, a 
spectator of himself, a self-student, his wisdom re- 
maining with him, as he expresses it, that he may 
thus investigate and see what is the value of wealth 
and self-indulgence. He thus reports the result of 
this spiritual vivisection : — 

" I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee 
with mirth ; therefore enjoy pleasure : and, behold, this 
also was vanity. I said of laughter, It is mad : and of 
mirth, What doeth it? I searched in mine heart how 
to cheer my flesh with wine, mine heart yet guiding me 
with wisdom, and how to lay hold on foUy, till I might 
see what it was good for the sons of men that they 
should do under the heaven all the days of their life. I 
made me great works ; I builded me houses ; I planted 
me vineyards; I made me gardens and parks, and I 
planted trees in them of aU kinds of fruit : I made me 
pools of water, to water therefrom the forest where 
trees were reared : I bought men servants and maidens, 
and had servants born in my house ; also I had great 
possessions of herds and flocks, above aU that were 
before me and in Jerusalem : I gathered me also silver 
and gold and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the 
provinces : I gat me men singers and women singers, 
and the delights of the sons of men, concubines very 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 295 

many. So I was great, and increased more than all 
that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom 
remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired 
I kept not from them : I withheld not my heart from 
any joy, for my heart rejoiced because of all my labor ; 
and this was my portion from all my labor. Then I 
looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and 
on the labor that I had labored to do ; and behold, all 
was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no 
profit under the sun." ^ 

The king is next portrayed as giving himself in 
a similar spirit to ambition, with a like reflection 
on the experiment while he is trying it ; the result 
is the same : " What hath a man of all his labor, 
and of the striving of his heart wherein he laboreth 
under the sun ? For all his days are but sorrows, 
and his travail is grief ; yea even in the night his 
heart taketh no rest. This also is vanity." ^ 

The preacher's experience of wealth, pleasure, 
ambition is much that which Lord Byron has 
expressed, imputing his interpretation to Childe 
Harold : — 

'* Years steal 
Fire from the mind as -vigor from the limb ; 
And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim. 

" His had been quaffed too quickly, and he found 
The days were wormwood ; but he filled again, 
And from a purer fount, on holier ground, 
And deemed its spring perpetual ; but in vain ! 
Still round him clung invisibly a chain 
Which gall'd for ever, fettering though unseen, 

1 Eccles. ii. 1-11. 2 Eccles. iL 22, 23. 



296 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

And heavy though it clanked not ; worn with pain, 
Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen. 
Entering with every step he took through many a scene." ^ 

Next the king tries philosophy ; the result is no 
better. The wise man is none the better off for 
all his thinking : for 

" that which bef aUeth the sons of men bef alleth beasts ; 
even one thing bef alleth them : as the one dieth, so dieth 
the other ; yea, they have all one breath ; and man hath 
no pre-eminence above the beasts : for all is vanity. AU 
go unto one place ; aU are of the dust, and aU turn to 
dust again." ^ 

Wisdom, ambition, wealth, pleasure, all are van- 
ity. It is useless to build houses and plant gardens 
and get men singers and women singers ; useless to 
allow oneseK to be inspired by a great ambition to 
attempt great things in the world, or to be incited 
by a great curiosity to understand life's mysteries ; 
for nothing can be changed and nothing can be 
discovered; all is vanity of vanities. The poet's 
conclusion as to wisdom, " of making many books 
there is no end and much study is a weariness of 
the flesh," brings to mind that of the Persian poet, 
Omar Khiayyam, as interpreted by Edward Fitz- 
gerald : — 

" Myself when young, did eagerly frequent 
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument 
About it and about : but evermore 
Came out by the same door as in I went." 

1 Childe Harold : Canto ill., stanzas viii. and ix. 

2 Eccles. iii. 19. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 297 

Next the king tries the golden mean: he pro- 
poses to take life as he finds it ; to live day by day 
without ambition, without philosophy; to choose 
the middle path, the path of safety. He will try 
the plan of taking care of his own interests, but 
with some regard for his neighbor's property : — 

" Two are better than one ; because they have a good 
reward for their labor. For if they fail, the one will 
lift up his f eUow ; but woe to him that is alone when he 
falleth and hath not another to lift him up. Again, if 
two lie together, then they have warmth, but how can 
one be warm alone ? And if a man prevail against him 
that is alone, two shall withstand him ; and a threefold 
cord is not quickly broken." ^ 

Combination is better than unregulated competi- 
tion : not because love and service are higher than 
self-seeking, but because combination is a wiser 
kind of self-seeking. All excess fails : feasting is 
to be moderated by sympathy for the mourner, for 
" it is better to go to the house of mourning than 
to the house of feasting : for that is the end of all 
men ; and the king wiU lay it to his heart." It is 
well to be righteous, but not too righteous ; there is 
a golden mean between abandoning oneself unre- 
servedly to self-indulgence and devoting oneself too 
heroically to virtue : — 

" Be not righteous over much ; neither make thyself 
over wise ; why shouldest thou destroy thyseH ? Be not 
overmuch wicked, neither be thou foolish ; why should- 
est thou die before thy time ? " ^ 

1 Eccles. iv. 9-12. 2 Eccles. vii. 16, 17. 



298 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

The satirical conclusion of the king may be 
stated thus : be as virtuous as the public opinion 
of your time requires ; more than that is perilous ; 
less than that is fatal. In the same spirit of keen 
satire Cardinal Newman has graphically described 
" the safe man : " — 

" In the present day, mistiness is the mother of wis- 
dom. A man who can set down a half a dozen general 
propositions, which escape from destroying one another 
only by being diluted into truisms, who can hold the 
balance between opposites so skillfully as to do without 
fulcrum or beam, who never enunciates a truth without 
guarding himself against being supposed to exclude the 
contradictory, — who holds that Scripture is the only 
authority, yet that the Church is to be deferred to, that 
faith only justifies, yet that it does not justify without 
works, that grace does not depend on the Sacraments, 
yet is not given without them, that bishops are a divine 
ordinance, yet those who have them not are in the same 
religious condition as those who have, — this is your 
safe man and the hope of the Church ; this is what the 
Church is said to want, not party men, but sensible, 
temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through 
the channel of no-meaning between the Scylia and Cha- 
rybdis of Aye and No." ^ 

To be as good as the public opinion of your time 
requires is the golden mean. And what comes of 
that ? How does it seem when old age comes on 
and death draws near ? The poet endeavors in ima^ 
gination to forecast the end of life, and with beau- 

1 Apologia Pro Vita Sua. By John Henry, Cardinal Newman, 
pp. 102, 103. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 299 

tiful poetic figures describes the habitation of the 
old man breaking down into decay and ruin : — 

" Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth ; and let thy 
heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in 
the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes ; 
but know thou, that for all these things God will bring 
thee into judgment. Therefore remove sorrow from thy 
heart, and put away evil from thy flesh ; for youth and 
the prime of hf e are vanity. Remember also thy Cre- 
ator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come, 
and the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no 
pleasure in them ; or ever the sun, and the light, and the 
moon, and the stars, be darkened, and the clouds return 
after the rain ; in the day when the keepers of the house 
shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, 
and the grinders cease because they are few, and those 
that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors 
shall be shut in the street ; when the sound of the grind- 
ing is low, and one shall rise up at the voice of a bird, 
and all the daughters of music shall be brought low ; 
yea, they shall be afraid of that which is high, and ter- 
rors shall be in the way ; and the almond tree shall blos- 
som, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and the 
caperberry shall fall : because man goeth to his long 
home, and the mourners go about the streets ; or ever 
the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, 
or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel 
broken at the cistern ; and the dust return to the earth 
as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it. . . . 

..." This is the end of the matter ; all that hath been 
heard : fear God, and keep his commandments ; for this 
is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every 



300 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether 
it be good or whether it be evil." ^ 

Perhaps in this chapter I have laid too much 
stress on the cynical and satirical view of life which 
pervades this poem. It is truly a poem of two 
voices; in it the two spirits speak. Through it 
are scattered nuggets of practical wisdom which 
are not cynical nor satirical ; such are those which 
commend the cultivation of the cheerful spirit, the 
joyous life, the real and right use of the world and 
what it brings to man : " Go thy way, eat thy bread 
with a joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart ; " 
" Live joyfully with thy wife whom thou lovest all 
the days of the life of thy vanity ; " " Kejoice, O 
young man in thy youth ; " such are those which 
counsel to moderation and self-restraint, to self- 
respect and the cultivation of a sound mind : " A 
good name is better than precious ointment ; " " The 
patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit ; " 
" Wisdom is as good as an inheritance ; " such are 
some of the proverbs which seem not to belong to 
the poem, but to be attached to it, much as in a 
journal the writer incorporates apothegms which 
have impressed him as specially worthy of preser- 
vation : " He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it ; " 
" If the serpent bite before it is charmed there is 

1 Eeeles. xi. 9-xii. 7, xii. 13, 14. Some critics think that this 
conclusion of the -whole matter was written by another pen. I 
cannot understand their point of view. It seems clear to me that 
from the beginning to the end that was the result constantly kept 
in mind by the writer of this gnomic monodrama. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 301 

no advantage in the charmer ; " " Cast thy bread 
upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many 
days." But these are incidental rather than essen- 
tial to the poem. Its theme is indicated by its 
opening and its closing lines : " Vanity of vanities, 
all is vanity ; " what then ? " Let us eat and drink, 
for to-morrow we die"? No! "Fear God and 
keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty 
of man." 

I do not know, and cannot easily imagine, what 
he makes out of the Book of Ecclesiastes who be- 
lieves that every sentence in the Bible is equally 
authoritative with every other sentence. " Be not 
righteous overmuch." Is that a divinely inspired 
counsel ? " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Is 
that a divine interpretation of life? If so, how 
shall we reconcile it with the declaration of Paul : 
" All things are yours, whether Paul, or ApoUos, 
or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things 
present, or things to come," or that other declara- 
tion that "God giveth us all things richly to enjoy"? 
The truth of Ecclesiastes is the truth of human 
experience, larger and deeper than the truth of any 
text. Let the self-seeker try how he may to get 
satisfaction out of life, he is sure to fail — that is 
the lesson of Ecclesiastes — and a lesson the more 
eloquent because wrought out of a living experi- 
ence. Try to get satisfaction out of things ; ware- 
houses ten, twelve, fourteen stories high ; railroads 
binding together the borders of a continent ; great 
palaces ; hundred thousand dollar balls ; what is 



302 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREW a 

the end ? " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." We 
are as children who build their houses on the sand 
and the tide comes and sweeps them away. Try to 
get satisfaction out of philosophy ; we do not need 
God, nor conscience, nor churches, nor religion; 
these are for women and children ; we will have a 
public school system ; great universities ; know- 
ledge ; culture. What comes of that experiment ? 
The end is the same. Cultivate the brain and leave 
the heart to be atrophied ; cultivate the intellect and 
leave the conscience to die ; teach men how to be 
shrewd, but not how to be honest, just, true, pure, 
and the end of that Mr. Huxley thus describes: 
" Undoubtedly your gutter child may be converted 
by mere intellectual drill into ' the subtlest of all the 
beasts of the field ; ' but we know what has become 
of the original of that description, and there is no 
need to increase the number of those who imitate 
him successfully without being aided by the rates." ^ 
This also is " vanity of vanities." Try, then, to 
accomplish great achievements ; but still for our- 
selves, not for others; not great service of love, 
but great service of self ; not great houses, not 
great wisdom, but great ambitions shall be our aim ; 
shall we find our soul satisfied in this ? The end of 
this, too, is "vanity of vanities." Self-indulgent 
pleasure ends in pessimism ; self-indulgent ambi- 
tion in fatalism ; " That which hath been is that 
which shall be ; and that which hath been done is 
that which shall be done ; and there is no new thing 

1 Science and Education Essays : The School Boards, p. 396. 



A SCHOOL OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 303 

under the sun." That is, nothing can be done ; why- 
make the endeavor? This fatalism of Ecclesiastes 
is not more mournful than that of modern times, 
that to be found, for example, in John Cotter Mor- 
ison's " Service of Man." Even self-sacrificing ser- 
vice of man is in his estimate of but little value : 
" A man with a criminal nature and education, 
under given circumstances of temptation can no 
more help committing crime than he can help hav- 
ing a headache under certain conditions of brain 
and stomach." " No merit or demerit attaches to 
the saint or the sinner in the metaphysical and 
mystic sense of the word. Their good or evil qual- 
ities are none of their making." " The sooner the 
idea of moral responsibility is got rid of the better 
it will be for society and moral education." " Bad 
men will be bad, do what we will ; " the most we 
can do is to make them " less bad." This, the 
necessarianism of its latest apostle, is as dismal and 
depressing as that of Ecclesiastes. Let us then try 
opportunism ; take life as it comes ; have a good 
time, but not with abandon ; cooperate with others, 
but to serve ourselves ; keep the golden mean ; be 
a trimmer in politics and vote with the winning 
party ; be a " safe man " in the church, and teach 
not what we believe, but what others think we 
ought to believe. And though the party may give 
political rewards and the church ecclesiastical re- 
wards, when old age comes and death impends, and 
the disgrace of a prosperous and useless life is 
about to be bequeathed to our sons and our sons' 



304 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

sons, posterity will write our biography in this 
single phrase of this ancient poet, " Yanity of van- 
ities, all is vanity." 

What then ? If there be no satisfaction in plea- 
sure, in wisdom, in ambition, in the golden mean, 
where can it be found ? In duty. In doing right 
because it is right. Not for reward here, nor for 
reward hereafter, not for happiness on earth, not 
for crowns in heaven, not for immortality of fame, 
not for immortality of personal existence ; but be- 
cause duty is duty, and right is right, and God is 
God. This seems to me the meaning of the con- 
fessedly enigmatical Book of Ecclesiastes. 



CHAPTER XIII 

A COLLECTION OF LYKICS 

The Book of Psalms is a collection of Hebrew 
lyrics. It is a mistake, though a common one, to 
suppose that David wrote even a considerable num- 
ber of them. Ewald allows twelve of the one hun- 
dred and fifty Psalms to have been written by 
David ; Cheyne and Driver appear to think that a 
slight overestimate.^ If we suppose the earliest 
Psalms were written in the time of David and the 
last in the time of the Maccabees, — and that is 
now the prevailing opinion, — then the Hebrew 
Psalter represents about eight hundred and fifty 
years of song in the Hebrew nation. 

The authors of these Psalms and the date of 
their composition are not known. The titles to cer- 
tain of the Psalms giving the names of the authors 
and the occasions when they were composed were 
added by an unknown editor, who made either the 
collection as we now have it, or the prior col- 
lections, which are incorporated in and constitute 
the present collection. There is very little reason 
to suppose that this unknown editor had any better 

^ The twelve are Psalms iii., iv., vii., viii., xi., xv., xviii., xix. 
1-6, xxiv., xxix., xxxii., ci. 



306 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

advantages for knowing who were the authors of 
these Psalms than we have; there is reason to 
think that he had not as great advantages. The 
critical faculty was not as largely developed in 
that age, and the grounds on which his opinion 
seems to have been sometimes based would not be 
regarded as adequate by any modern critic. There- 
fore, when we read the statement at the head of a 
Psalm : " A Psalm of David," or " A Psalm of 
Moses," or " A Psalm of Solomon," or " A Psalm 
of David after his sin with Bathsheba," or "A 
Psalm of David after his experience with Doeg," 
we take this as what some unknown editor, perhaps 
two centuries before Christ, thought about the mat- 
ter. These titles are no part of the original record ; 
they are not authoritative ; certainly they are not 
conclusive to one who studies the Bible in the sci- 
entific or literary spirit. 

The collection of Psalms, as we now possess it, is 
composed of five collections which had been previ- 
ously made. This is so evident that in the Revised 
Version we find the five collections put into five 
distinct books ; each of which closes with a dox- 
ology. At the end of the second book is the state- 
ment : " The prayers of David the son of Jesse are 
ended." This was appended to that book to indi- 
cate that none of the subsequent Psalms belonged 
to David, and perhaps to indicate that all the 
Psalms in the previous two books were written by 
him. But if that was the intention, it certainly 
was a mistake. There are Psalms in the subse- 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS 307 

quent books which are, by their titles, attributed 
to David, and there are Psalms in the first and 
second books which history shows very clearly were 
not written by him. In my youth we sang out of 
a hymn book entitled " Watts and Select," Watts 
comprising the larger part of the collection. The 
Hebrew hymnal is "David and Select," though 
David is the composer of only a minority of the 
Psalms; the "select" includes an overwhelming 
majority of them. 

The Hebrew Book of Psalms contains all the 
extant lyric poetry of the ancient Hebrews. The 
word "lyric" is derived from the word "lyre;" in its 
original significance a lyric poem is one intended to 
be sung with accompaniment on the lyre. Substan- 
tially all the Hebrew poetry intended to serve thus 
as a vehicle for song is included in the Book of 
Psalms. Their most notable characteristic is that 
they are all— with possibly two or three exceptions 
— religious. This wiU at first perhaps seem to the 
casual reader a truism, since this collection of Psalms 
is in the Bible ; but it is in fact very significant that 
all the lyrics of the Hebrew people which have been 
preserved are of one spirit. Imagine that all the 
extant lyrics of an ancient people were amatory, or 
all were martial, should we not draw some conclu- 
sions respecting the people from this fact ? In say- 
ing that all the lyrics of the ancient Hebrews are 
religious, I mean that they all are expressions of 
some phase of the divine life. Is there sorrow? 
it is because of separation from God ; joy ? it is 



308 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

because of the presence of God ; confession ? it is 
of sin against God ; praise ? it is praise of God. No 
songs of lovers to their mistresses, or of maidens 
to victors in war or athletic contests ; no dirges 
over the bodies of the dead ; no marriage songs ; 
no glorification of nature : all is sacred, all divine. 
And if we may believe that these collections are 
simply relics selected from a much greater mass of 
Hebrew lyrical poetry which has now perished,^ 
then we must either suppose that substantially all 
the lyrics of the Hebrew people were religious in 
their character, or else that only those which were 
religious found such a place in popular esteem that 
they were preserved from oblivion. The former 
is probably the case. The Hebrew people were per- 
meated by the spirit of religion. Their laws, their 
customs, their festivals, their dramas, their fiction, 
their folk-lore, their proverbs, their popular songs, 
all were pervaded by their faith in Jehovah as the 
God, the King, the Father of their nation. This is 
the first and most notable fact which confronts us 
at every turn in our study of Hebrew literature ; 
the spiritual significance of this fact I leave to be 
considered in the closing chapter of this volume. 

Poetry is difficult, perhaps impossible to define. 
It may be said, however, to have two characteris- 
tics, — one an artificial beauty in form, the other a 
vital beauty in spirit. The most exquisite figures 
of imagination, the greatest intensity of emotion, 

1 As is doubtless the case with the Greek lyrics. Symonds, 
Greek Poets, i. p. 293. 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS 309 

unaccompanied by the peculiar beauty of form 
which belongs to poetry may constitute poetical 
prose, but not poetry : it is prose, though it may 
be poetical prose ; the most perfect beauty of 
form, if it clothes un poetical ideas, is not poetry. 
In Enoflish literature the form consists of one of 
two elements, — rhyme or rhythm. Hebrew poetry 
contained neither. The formal characteristic of He- 
brew poetry consisted in certain artificial arrange- 
ments of the lines, in parallelism, as : — 

" Bless the Lord, O my soiil, 
And all that is within me bless his holy name : " 

or in antithesis, as : — 

" Thou openest thine hand, they are satisfied with good ; 
Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled ; " 

or in the repetition of a certain refrain at the end 
of each verse or paragraph, such as in Psalm 
cxxxvi., " His mercy endureth forever," or as in 
Psalms xlii. and xlviii., really one Psalm, acci- 
dentally or erroneously divided, the refrain : — 

" Why art thou cast down, my soul, 
And why art thou disquieted within me ? 
Hope thou in God : for I shall yet praise him 
For the health of his countenance." 

or a dramatic interplay of characters as between 

the soul, the prophet, and Jehovah in Psalm 

xci. : — 

The Soul. " He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most 
high 
Shall abide under the shadow of the almighty. 
I will say to Jehovah, my refuge and my fortress, 
My God in whom I trust. 



310 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

The Prophet. " For he shall deliver itee from the snare of the 
fowler 
And from the noisome pestilenee. 
He shall cover thee with his pinions, 
And under his wings shalt thou take refuge. 

. . . Jehovah. " Because he hath set his love upon me therefore 
will I deliver him : 
I will set him on high because he hath known my name. 
He shall call upon me and I will answer him ; 
I will be with him in trouble ; 
I will deliver him and honor him. 
"With long life "will I satisfy him, 
And show him my salvation." 

All these forms are illustrated by Psalm xxiv., 
as sung by a procession of priests and people on 
some great festal day. The reader must imagine 
Jerusalem full of pilgrims gathered from all parts 
of Palestine ; a great procession formed in the city ; 
priests leading the way ; a band of music composed 
of lyres, viols, reeds, cymbals, tambourines, casta- 
nets, drums, trumpets, accompanying it. The pro- 
cession reaches the Temple gates, which are closed ; 
and the following musical colloquy takes place : — 

Chorus in procession. " The earth is the Lord's and the fullness 
thereof ; 
The world, and they that dwell therein. 
For he hath founded it upon the seas, 
And established it upon the floods. 

Priest ; a solo. " Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord ? 
And who shall stand in his holy place ? 

Another Priest, responding. 
pure heart ; 
Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity. 
And hath not sworn deceitfully. 
He shall receive a blessing from the Lord, 
And righteousness from the God of his salvation. 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS 311 

Chorus, in procession. " This is the generation of them that 
seek after him, 
That seek thy face, O God of Jacob. 

Chortis, at Temple gate. " Lift up your heads, O ye gates ; 
And be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors ; 
And the King of glory shall come in. 

Response from within. " Who is the King of glory ? 

Chorus, without. " The Lord strong and mighty, 
The Lord mighty in battle. 
Lift up your heads, ye gates ; 
Yea, lift them up, ye everlasting doors : 
And the King of glory shall come in. " 

Then the gates are thrown open, and the proces- 
sion enters while the priestly doorkeeper repeats 
the question : — 

" Who is this King of glory ? " 

and the procession chants the reply : — 

" The Lord of hosts, 
He is the King of glory." 

The spirit of poetry it is much more difficult to 
define. Without attempting anything so ambitious, 
I will venture to assume that the spirit of true 
poetry includes at least two elements : truth and 
beauty. There are two worlds, an outer and an 
inner ; a world of sense and a world supersensu- 
ous ; a world which we enter through the eye and 
the ear, and a world which we enter through the 
emotion and the imagination. To see clearly this 
inner, this invisible, this real and eternal world, 
and so to translate it into outward form that men 
with less power of vision can see it also, this is the 
function of the artist, the musician, and the poet. 



312 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Their end is the same, tlieir instruments are differ- 
ent. No man is a true poet unless lie first of all 
sees what other men of less poetic genius have 
failed to see, and then through literary forms inter- 
prets this vision to others. " The function of the 
imagination," says Hamilton W. Mabie, " is two- 
fold : to see things in their essential nature and 
their universal relations, and to give them concrete 
form." ^ This is the function of the poet ; and what 
we have to ask ourselves about the Hebrew lyric 
poets is, TThat did they see or think they saw 
respecting the essential nature of God and his rela- 
tion to nature and to men ? We are not to ask, 
What is their theology ? Strictly speaking, the 
poet has no theology. He is an observer, not 
a philosopher ; but an observer of the invisible 
world ; he tells us what he has seen, and leaves us 
to correlate the visions with each other, and with 
the visions of other poets, and with the facts of the 
outer world, and out of all this material construct 
a philosophy. The poet precedes the philosopher 
as the observer precedes the scientist. Our ques- 
tion is not. What was the theology of the Hebrew 
poets ? though out of their poems we can construct 
a quasi theology ; but. How did they see God ? how 
did he seem to them in his essential character and 
in his relations to Nature and to men ? 

For this much is evident concerning these He- 
brew lyrics, that they are expressions of experience. 
They are not works of art, that is, they were not 

^ Essays on Nature and Culture, p. 85. 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS 313 

written for artistic effect ; they are not dramatic, 
that is, they are not the imagined experiences o£ 
others. They have sprung out of the heart of the 
poets, that is, out of the heart of the nation, and 
are artless expressions of the experiences of their 
authors. In them, therefore, are varied experi- 
ences : love and hate, joy and sorrow, faith and 
doubt, hope and despair ; experiences in victory and 
in defeat, in temptation, in repentance, and in 
restoration ; at home and in exile ; surrounded by 
friends and environed by enemies. They include, 
therefore, songs of praise and songs of penitence ; 
songs national and songs individual ; songs eccle- 
siastical and songs for the household ; songs of 
ebullient joy and songs that are one long plaint 
of sorrow ; songs of triumphant victory and songs 
of spiritual struggle. It is hardly too much to say 
that every phase of religious opinion which has 
ever found voice in sacred poetry is to be found 
expressed in some form in this collection of Hebrew 
lyrics. They are not all expressions of saintly 
faith and hope and love ; sometimes the weakness 
of the soul is fully recognized and frankly con- 
fessed : — 

" Will the Lord cast off forever ? 
And will he be favorable no more ? 
Is his mercy clean gone forever ? 
Doth his promise fail for evermore ? 
Hath God forgotten to be gracious ? 
Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies ? 
And I said, This is my infirmity ; 

But I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most 
High. 



314 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

I will make mention of the deeds of the Lord ; 
For I vrill remember thy wonders of old." ^ 

Sometimes impassioned emotions, natural but 
not saintly, find expression in them. Tiiis is tlie 
case in the so-called imprecatory Psalms,^ which 
have been in all times a source of great ethical per- 
plexity to Bible students. Imagine the people of 
Israel prisoners in Babylon ; their holy city de- 
stroyed ; the sacred Temple razed to the ground ; 
many of their fellows put to the sword ; their chil- 
dren killed, their women ravished before their eyes. 
Their captors deride their religion, taunting them 
with the question. Where is now thy God? and 
derisively calling on them to sing their temple 
songs to him who has abandoned them to desola- 
tion ; and this is the answer of one of their poets : 

" By the rivers of Babylon 
There we sat down, yea, we wept, 
When we remembered Zion. 
Upon the willows in the midst thereof 
We hanged up our harps. 

For there they that led us captive required of us songs, 
And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, 
Sing us one of the songs of Zion. 
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land ? 

daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed ; 
Happy shall he be that rewardeth thee 

As thou hast served lis. 

1 Psalm Ixxvii. 7-11. 

2 Such as Psalms lix., Ixix., cix., cxxxvii. Observe that Psalm 
cxxxix. 21, 22, indicates that these are imprecations not on per- 
sonal enemies but on enemies of God. 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS 315 

Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones 
Against the rock." ^ 

How, it is asked, can such a Psalm be reconciled 
with Christ's command, " Love your enemies, and 
pray for them that persecute you " ? It cannot be 
reconciled with that command. It is not a divinely 
inspired example to be imitated ; it is a very human 
experience to be shunned. It indicates the mean- 
ing of Christ's command and illustrates his ex- 
ample by setting in contrast with it the natural 
feeling of a truly devout soul under persecution. 
And yet in one respect the Psalm is inspiring and 
worthy of imitation. Devout people need to be 
inspired with hatred of cant — of the spirit which 
incites us to say to God not what we think, but 
what we think he thinks we ought to think. To 
be sincere, simple, genuine, transparent with God, 
to dare to show him our worst as well as our best, 
to dare to ask him to search us and see if there be 
any evil way in us, to treat him as we treat the 
physician, pointing out to him everything in us 
that he may teach us what is evil and what is good, 
and how to abhor the evil and to cleave to the 
good, to treat him as our best and most intimate 
friend, from whom we wish to conceal nothing — 
this is one of the lessons which the unreserved 
candor of these ancient lyrics teaches, and which 
the church stiU has need to learn. 

We are not, then, to regard the Book of Psalms 
as a collection of lyrics written by artists " for art's 

1 Psalm cxxxvii. 1-4, 8, 9. 



316 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

sake ; " nor as dramatic interpretations of experi- 
ences imagined by the writer to be acceptable to 
God ; nor as embodying a system of divine truth or 
even the contents of such a system ; nor as inspired 
revelations of experiences which being divinely 
created are to be blindly imitated. We are to re- 
gard it as the actual expression of the experiences 
of a devout people to be studied that we may es- 
cape their doubts, their despair, their hate, their 
tumultuous trouble, and may secure their faith, 
their hope, their love, their peace ; the better guide 
for us in our times of doubt and fear, because writ- 
ten by those who had like experiences and out of 
them were conducted, as Israel out of the Red Sea, 
by their God. The experience of these writers is 
not always congruous ; but there are certain funda- 
mental elements common to their experiences ; and 
from them we may deduce, not indeed a coherent 
system of theology, but a united testimony respect- 
ing certain aspects of the divine life. 

Conceiving, then, this book as an anthology of 
sacred lyrics respecting the deeper religious experi- 
ences of this Hebrew people during eight centu- 
ries of their national life, we ask ourselves what 
are the distinguishing characteristics of the experi- 
ences which it interprets. 

The most fundamental fact is that God is 
throughout these lyrics felt as a universal Pre- 
sence. Long before the doctrine of divine im- 
manence was thought out in theology, long be° 
fore Herbert Spencer had formulated the result of 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS SIT 

philosophy in the phrase, " Amid all the mysteries 
by which we are surrounded nothing is more certain 
than that we are ever in the presence of an Infinite 
and Eternal Energy from which all things pro- 
ceed," these ancient poets had realized this fact as 
an experience. It is sometimes said that the He- 
brew conception of the deity was anthropomorphic. 
If by this is meant that the ancient Hebrews con- 
ceived of God as having experiences interpreted 
to us by human experiences, — joy and sorrow, 
hope and regret, love and wrath, — it is true ; if 
by it is meant that they conceived of him as em- 
bodied as a man, it certainly is not true of these 
Hebrew singers. They sometimes conceived of 
him as in his holy temple, sometimes as on his 
throne in the heavens, but at the same time as on 
the earth beholding and trying the children of 
men.^ He was to them a Universal Presence. I 
know not where in literature, ancient or modern, 
can be found a sublimer expression of faith in a 
divine Spirit who transcends all space relations, 
than in the one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm : — 

" Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? 

Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? 

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : 

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. 

If I take the wings of the morning-. 

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; 

Even there shall thy hand lead me, 

And thy right hand shall hold me. 

If I say, Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me, 

1 Psalm xi. 4. 



318 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

And tlie light about me shall be night ; 

Even the darkness hideth not from thee, 

But the night shineth as the day : 

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee." 

Yet the reader will observe that this is not a 
theory of divine immanence ; it is not, like Her- 
bert Spencer's formula, a deduction from an exami- 
nation of the mysteries by which we are surrounded. 
The Presence is felt, realized, experienced; the 
Psalm is a testimony ; wheresoever the writer goes 
he finds his God. The scientist might conclude 
that God is everywhere and yet never be person- 
ally conscious of his presence. This writer draws 
no conclusion, makes no generic scientific state- 
ment ; he simply says, God is everywhere present 
with me ; I am conscious of him. 

No other Psalm states this as clearly, as defi- 
nitely, as the one hundred and thirty-ninth, but 
this experience of God as a universal presence 
underlies, pervades, characterizes, all these lyrics. 
They are illuminated by this God-consciousness. 
It is this realization of a divine presence which 
gives peculiar sublimity to the Nature Psalms. 
These are not praises of nature ; they are not glow- 
ing nor picturesque, nor awe-inspiring portrayals 
of natural phenomena. They have no resemblance 
to Lord Byron's description of the thunderstorm 
in the Alps or John Keats' ode to Ben Nevis. 
They do not personify these phenomena and re- 
present them as in themselves living entities. 
There is in them no hint of local deities, or sprites, 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS 319 

or fairies, or dragons, malicious, miscliievous, or 
beneficent. Nature is alive ; but tbe life is that of 
Jehovah, and what inspires the poet is not the 
phenomenon but the God who is behind the phe- 
nomenon. In the thunderstorm Jehovah bows 
the heavens and comes down ; the darkness is his 
hiding place ; the clouds are his pavilion ; the 
lightnings are his arrows.^ He is no less in the 
milder phases of nature's life. "He sends forth 
the springs into the valleys ; " "he causeth grass 
to grow for cattle and herbs for the service of 
man ; " he makes the darkness and it is night when 
all the beasts of the forest do creep forth ; the 
young lions seek their meat from him ; all living 
things wait on him ; what they gather he gives ; 
when he hides his face they are troubled.^ Every- 
thing, therefore, in nature gives praise to Jehovah. 
All phenomena constitute a great orchestra ranged 
together and in harmony; at the command of 
the leader they glorify him. The heavens rejoice ; 
the earth is glad ; the sea roars ; the fields are 
joyful ; the trees of the wood rejoice.^ The whole 
world is one vast cathedral, and all things in it 
are a great chorus, "and in his temple everything 
saith. Glory." * The poet recognizes no difference 
in this respect between different phenomena ; the 
terrible things in nature as well as the beautiful 
declare Jehovah's praise. There is reverence for 
Jehovah, awe in his presence, but no dread of him. 

1 Psalm xviii. 7-17. ^ ggg Pgalm civ. 

3 See Psalm xcvi. * Psalm xxix. 9, Rev. Vers. 



320 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

That he is king and reigneth; that he is to be 
feared above all gods ; that he is a righteous judge 
and is coming to judge the people with his truth, 
are causes not for fear but for rejoicing.^ Plu- 
tarch in an eloquent passage has described the im- 
pression produced on the pagan mind by belief in 
the universal presence of the deity : " He fears not 
the sea who never goes to sea ; nor a battle who 
follows not the camp; nor robbers that stirs not 
abroad ; nor malicious informers that is a poor 
man ; nor earthquakes that dwells in Gaul ; nor 
thunderbolts that dwells in Ethiopia ; but he that 
dreads the divine powers dreads everything; the 
land, the sea, the air, the sky, the dark, the light, 
a sound, a silence, a dream." ^ Of such dread of the 
universal presence of Jehovah there is no hint in 
these lyrics. That presence inspires to joy, a joy 
that often breaks out in exultant shouts, — halle- 
lujahs in spirit not unlike our huzzahs. In this 
joy, not in what Jehovah has done or given, but in 
Jehovah himself, in his mere presence, everything 
is called on to unite. Like a healthy boy whose 
spirits must find vent, the poet calls for noise, " a 
joyful noise," unto Jehovah. All instruments are 
called into play to express this rejoicing : the harp, 
the timbrel, the psaltery, the trumpet, the cornet, 
the pipe, the stringed instruments, the loud-sound- 
ing cymbals.^ Nor is this enough. Like the lover 

^ See Psalms xcy., xevi. ^ Plutarch's Morals, i. 169. 

* Psalms Ixxxi. 1-3 ; xcv. 1, 2 ; xcviii. 4-6 ; c. 1 ; cxlix. 3 ; cl. 
3-5. 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS 321 

he calls on nature to join in his rejoicing, the high 
and the low, the awful and the beautiful, the old 
and the young : — 

" Praise the Lord from the earth, 
Ye dragons and all deeps : 
Fire and hail, snow and vapor : 
Stormy wind, fulfilling his word : 
Mountains and all hills ; 
Fruitfid trees and all cedars : 
Beasts and all cattle ; 
Creeping things and flying fowl ; 
Kings of the earth and all peoples ; 
Princes and all judges of the earth : 
Both young men and maidens ; 
Old men and children : 
Let them praise the name of the Lord ; 
For his name alone is exalted : 
His glory is above the earth and heaven." ^ 

This presence of Jehovah is seen not alone in 
nature ; it is the secret of the nation's greatness. 
The great national lyrics are not praises to the 
nation's great men : there are no odes to Moses or 
Joshua or David or Solomon, ^ none to the great 
prophets or leaders of Israel ; these are all forgot- 
ten in the absorbing brilliance of Jehovah's glory. 
It is not Moses who delivered Israel from Egypt, 
it is Jehovah: Jehovah who " brought them forth 
with silver and gold," Jehovah who rebuked the 
Red Sea and led his people through the depths " as 
through a pasture land," Jehovah who " spread a 

1 Psalm cxlviii. 7-13. 

2 Unless Psalms xlv. and Ixxii. are exceptions : the former is 
a royal wedding hymn ; the latter I regard as Messianic, indirectly 
if not directly. 



322 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

cloud for a covering and a fire to give light in the 
night ; " it was not Joshua who conquered Canaan, 
it was Jehovah who " smote many nations and slew 
mighty kings," and gave their land for an heritage 
to Israel his servant.^ Let the reader compare 
with these Hebrew national hymns our own " Amer- 
ica." In ours the voice is one of praise to the land 
where our fathers died, land of the noble free, land 
of the woods and templed hills, land vocal with 
freedom's song ; only in the last verse is there any 
recognition of God as the " author of liberty ; " 
the Hebrew national lyrics are vehicles of the one 
theme. Praise to Jehovah, who made the fruitful 
land and gave it to his people, whom he delivered, 
counseled, guided, ruled, forgave, redeemed, with 
a mercy which endureth forever. Even when the 
topic of the Psalm is a longing in exile for the sing- 
ers' native land, the heart-longing is expressed as 
for Mount Zion, the Temple, and the Holy City, 
made holy because it is the city whither the tribes 
go up to give thanks unto the name of Jehovah.^ 

But in the experience of these Hebrew lyrical 
poets Jehovah is not only the God of nature and 
the God of the nation ; he is not only present in 
nature and in national history ; he is a personal 
friend ever present in the individual life. He is 
the poet's companion ; a shepherd who causes him 
to lie down in green pastures, leads him beside still 

^ Psalms cv., e-vd., cxxxv., cxxxvi. See, also, Ixxri., Ixxviii., cxiv., 
cxviii. 

2 Psalms cxxii., cxxv., cxxvi. 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS 323 

waters, restores liiin when wandering, leads him in 
right paths, is his fellow traveler in the valley of 
the shadow of death, and spreads for him a table 
while his enemies look on amazed and unable to 
disturb his meal. Jehovah knew the poet before 
he was born ; was at his birth and brought him 
forth into the light of life ; taught him the right 
way in which to walk ; in the time of danger pro- 
tected him as the mother bird protects her young 
from the hawk ; is a very present help to him in 
trouble ; is ever at his right hand so that he has no 
fear ; in times of great anxiety puts him to sleep 
as a nurse a wearied, worried child ; is his rock 
and his fortress delivering him from his enemies ; 
and when he transgresses, accepts his confession 
and forgives his sin.^ It is impossible to conceive 
these poets as considering it a question whether 
there is a God. To their thinking it is only a fool 
who saith, " There is no God." ^ To them Jehovah 
is personally known ; he is my king, my refuge, 
my God. An ownership of love and loyalty like 
the ownership of the citizen in his king, the child 
in his father, the wife in her husband, is estab- 
lished, recognized, maintained. God is in the poet's 
experience. To be separated from his God is the 
sorest evil in his captivity; to hear his God in- 
sulted with the cry, " Where is now thy God ? " is 
of all taunts the hardest to bear ; to realize that he 

^ Psalms xxiii. ; cxxxix. 15, 16 ; xxii. 9 ; xxv. 8 ; xxrii. 11 ; 
Ivii. 1 ; xlvi. 1 ; xvi. 8 ; iii. 5 ; xxxi. 3 ; li. 1, 2. 
2 Psalm xiv. 1. 



324 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

has sinned against his God brings on him a re- 
morse which for the time obliterates all sense of 
sin against himself and against his neighbor: 
" Against thee, thee only, have I sinned," he cries. 
Jehovah is with him in all the commonplace ex- 
periences of life : makes his feet nimble to run 
through the troop of his enemies, to leap the wall 
and escape when they pursue him ; makes his foot- 
ing sure as he climbs the dangerous cliffs ; makes 
his arm strong to bend the bow of brass.^ Sorrow 
only drives him to God as his refuge; through 
doubts and despair he struggles on toward hope — 
toward hope in Jehovah his God ; the gentleness 
of Jehovah makes him great, the loving kindness of 
Jehovah fills his cup to overflowing, the mercy 
of Jehovah forgives his sins and restores his soul.^ 
For not even the poet's sins can separate him from 
his God ; his God is a healer, a redeemer, a physi- 
cian of souls. This is the final, the transcendent 
fact in the experience of the Hebrew singer. 

*' Bless Jehovah, my soul ; 
And all that is within me, hless his holy name. 
Bless Jehovah, my soul. 
And f org-et not all his benefits : 
Who f orgiveth all thine iniquities ; 
Who healeth all thy diseases ; 
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction ; 
Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies i 
Who satisfieth thy years with good ; 
So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle." ^ 

1 Psalm xviii, 28-35. 

2 Psalm xviii. 35; see also Psalm xxiii. 3, 5 ; Ixxxvi. 5. 
^ Psalm ciii. 1-5. 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS 325 

"All thine iniquities" — the adultery and cruel 
treachery of David not too great to be forgiven ; 
" all thy diseases " — the pride and sensuality of 
Solomon not too deep-seated to be cured ; " re- 
deemeth thy life from destruction " — he that 
would destroy himself is redeemed from his self- 
destruction by Jehovah ; " crowneth thee with lov- 
ingkindness and tender mercies " — with kindness 
that comes from personal love, with tending mer- 
cies that nurse the sick back into life again ; " sat- 
isfieth thy years with good so that thy youth is 
renewed like the eagle's " — making old age more 
full of a serener hope than youth with all its eager 
and sometimes exasperating expectations. 

Modern theology might well go back to this lyric 
of an ancient and unknown past to learn some les- 
sons about God. Here is no hint of some one to 
pay the debt, to satisfy the law, to appease the 
wrath. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; 
for his own name's sake he pardons the penitent's 
iniquities ; according to his lovingkindness, accord- 
ing to the multitude of his tender mercies, he blots 
out the repentant's transgressions ; and their great- 
ness does not prevent ; on the contrary, he pardons 
them because they are great.^ Christ's parable of 
the Prodigal Son he borrowed and elaborated from 
the Hebrew poet's declaration, " Like as a father 
pitieth his children, so Jehovah pitieth them that 
fear him." Christ's picture of himself longing to 
gather Jerusalem under his protection as a hen 

1 Psalms U. 11, 17 ; xxv. 11 ; Ixxix. 9. 



326 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

gathers her chickens under her wings he borrowed 
from the same source : " Under his pinions will I 
trust." 1 

One truth the Hebrew poet did not know, for 
Christ had not yet brought life and immortality to 
light : he did not know of the future life. He had 
hope in God, and on that hope he built great ex- 
pectations ; but they were for his nation and on 
this earth. But he was sure that in his own time 
and in his own way Jehovah in whom he trusted 
would at last come for the redemption of Israel, 
and would bring deliverance not to Israel only, but 
to all the nations of the earth. 

" For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth ; 
And the poor that hath no helper. 
He shall have pity on the poor and needy, 
And the souls of the needy shall he save. 



His name shall endure forever ; 

His name shall he continued as long- as the sun ; 

And men shall be hlessed in him ; 

All nations shall call him happy." ^ 

It would be strange if one man had wrought all 
this out in his own experience ; strange if it had 
been all supernaturally revealed in one man's ex- 
perience ; but it is not less strange, looking back 
across the intervening centuries into a barbaric age 
and upon a barbaric nation, to find in eight centu- 
ries and a half of song aU the ripened fruit of 
Christian experience suggested, except only the 
assurance of immortality. A God who is a uni- 

1 Psalm ciii. 13 ; xci. 4. 2 pgahn Ixxii. 12-17. 



A COLLECTION OF LYRICS 327 

versal presence ; a God who is in all nature and 
with the nations of the earth ; a God who cares 
for the children of men ; a God who cares for the 
beasts of the forest ; a God who is gentle, patient, 
pitying, rendering an unbought mercy out of his 
own free love, forgiving iniquities because they are 
great and man cannot deliver himself from them ; 
a God who saves men even from their own self- 
willed destruction and who crowns them with a 
kindness that is full of love and a mercy that is 
full of nursing ; a God who gives promise of One 
who shall come in time, to make clearer revelations 
of his judgment, of his deliverance, of his power, 
and of his grace — something such as this seems to 
me to be the religious teaching of eight centuries 
and a half of the unparalleled lyric song contained 
in the Hebrew psalter. 



CHAPTER XIV 

PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 

In Bagster's edition, the Old Testament occupies 
&ve hundred and eighty-five pages ; of these, one 
hundred and fifty-four are occupied by the Books 
of the Prophets ; that is, more than one quarter of 
the entire literature of the ancient Hebrews, as it 
is preserved in our Protestant Bibles, is prophetic 
literature. This fact roughly indicates the impor- 
tance which public opinion attached to the work of 
the prophets, and the extent of their influence upon 
their nation and their share in interpreting its 
life. What was the function of the prophet among 
the ancient Hebrews ? Says George Adam Smith : 
" In vulgar use the name ' prophet ' has degene- 
rated to the meaning of 'one who foretells the 
future.' Of this meaning it is, perhaps, the first 
duty of every student of prophecy earnestly and 
stubbornly to rid himself. In its native Greek 
tongue ' prophet ' meant, not ' one who speaks be- 
fore,' but ' one who speaks for, or on behalf of, 
another.' It is in this sense that we must think 
of the ' prophet ' of the Old Testament. He is a 
speaker for God. The sharer of God's counsels, as 
Amos calls him, he becomes the bearer and preacher 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 329 

of God's word. Prediction of the future is only a 
part, and often a subordinate and accidental part, 
of an office whose full function is to declare the 
character and the will of God." ^ 

I ask the reader of this volume to comply with 
this counsel, and earnestly and stubbornly to rid 
himself of the idea that a prophet means one who 
foretells events. That the prophets did not regard 
themselves as primarily foretellers is clear from 
the character of their writings, only a very insig- 
nificant part of which is taken up with predictions 
of any kind. In those predictions they did not 
always agree with one another, and the events do 
not always occur as the prophets expected. When 
Jonah told the people of Nineveh, " In forty days 
Nineveh shall be destroyed," he foretold what did 
not come to pass. " God," says the sacred writer, 
" repented of the evil that he had said he would do 
unto them," and, as an historic fact, Nineveh was 
not destroyed for many years after the date at 
which, according to the story, the prophecy pur- 
ported to be delivered. 

Nor did the prophets themselves regard accuracy 
of prediction as the test of their prophecy. On the 
contrary, they distinctly repudiated this test. One 
of the greatest of the prophets, the author of the 
book of Deuteronomy, written six or seven centu- 
ries before Christ, by an unknown author,^ declares 
that though the prophet has accurately foretold 

1 The Book of the Twelve Prophets^ vol. i. p. 12. 

2 See chapter t. 



330 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

future events, and his witness is historically sus- 
tained, if his teaching does not sustain loyalty to 
Jehovah, not only is it to be counted of no value, 
but he himself is to be counted worthy of death. 
He says : — 

" If there arise in the midst of thee a prophet, or a 
dreamer of dreams, and he give thee a sign or a won- 
der, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof 
he spake unto thee, saying. Let us go after other gods, 
which thou hast not known, and let us serve them ; thou 
shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or unto 
that dreamer of dreams : for the Lord your God proveth 
you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with 
aU your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk 
after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his 
commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve 
him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that 
dreamer of dreams, shaU be put to death ; because he 
hath spoken rebellion against the Lord your God, which 
brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed 
thee out of the house of bondage, to draw thee aside out 
of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee 
to walk in. So shalt thou put away the evil from the 
midst of thee." ^ 

If the prophet's message is luminous with truth, 
if it is inspiring, if it presents to the people a 
grander conception of God than they have before 
entertained and calls them back to a more right- 
eous life in his service, then, and only then, is the 
messenger to be accepted. Not by any miraculous 

1 Dent. xiii. 1-5. 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 331 

quality, but by its religious spirit and character, is 
the teaching of the prophet to be measured. Such 
is the standard which the prophets themselves recog- 
nized as that by which all prophetic writings are to 
be judged. 

It is not difficult to see how the other conception, 
that the prophet is primarily a foreteller, became 
prevalent. In the first place, he was in some sense 
a foreteller. There are two ways in which men are 
accustomed to decide on their course of action in a 
time of doubt. He who is charged with the respon- 
sibility of decision may endeavor to peer into the 
future, judge what will be the probable results of 
the alternative courses, and by the anticipated re- 
sults determine the wisdom or the righteousness of 
the courses proposed. I say the righteousness, not 
merely the wisdom ; for he who is accustomed to 
determine the righteousness of conduct by its re- 
sults will naturally employ this method in deter- 
mining the righteousness as well as the wisdom of 
any prospective course of action. Thus while this 
method is always the one pursued by the man of 
expediency it is not only pursued by him ; it is also 
the method of the utilitarian. Such men serve a 
useful purpose ; the immediate results of proposed 
action ought always to be taken into account, and 
such counselors compel us to take account of im- 
mediate results; they require the community to 
count the cost, which it always ought to do. But 
they are never far-sighted, for it is never possible 
for even the most sagacious mortal to foresee more 



332 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

than the immediate outcome of any path of life, and 
this never with certainty. The other course of 
reaching a conclusion in such a time of doubt starts 
from a different premise and employs a different 
process. He who adopts it assumes as his premise 
that there are certain great principles, both of 
practical wisdom and of practical righteousness. 
On the irresistible force and immutable action of 
these principles he bases his judgment. The only 
problem is how to apply the principle, the truth of 
which he assumes, to the circumstances before him. 
If he is mistaken in his judgment of the principle 
the mistake is fatal ; nothing can prevent inevitable 
disaster from following the course of action he 
advises. But if he is correct in his apprehension 
of the principle, his errors in application can be 
corrected from time to time as these errors are 
made manifest. When Thomas Jefferson, long 
before he or any man could have anticipated the 
Civil War, said in view of slavery, " I tremble for 
my country when I reflect that God is just," 
Thomas Jefferson was a true prophet, not because 
a miraculous vision of future events was given to 
him, but because the sense of divine justice and the 
consciousness of human iniquity made him feel sure 
that unless the nation rid itself of its iniquity it 
would suffer the penalty threatened by divine jus- 
tice. He who is endowed with a keen sensitiveness 
to moral principles, with intellectual capacity to 
apply those principles to national life, and with 
the insight which enables him to understand the 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 333 

inward and real life of the nation, will be equipped 
with the foresight which will enable him to see — ■ 
not in detail, but in a large way — what will be the 
future of the nation. 

Thus the Hebrew prophets, because they per- 
ceived that God was just, because they perceived 
the divine principles which rule in the world 
though the world understands them not, because 
they understood the relation of the national events 
in the midst of which they lived to the divine law 
and the divine Lawgiver, were able to forecast the 
future. They did this, not generally, if ever, by 
listening to some message whispered into their ears, 
as, according to the Mohammedan legend, the dove 
whispered the message into the ears of Mohammed, 
but by their knowledge that national well-being 
follows national righteousness and national death 
follows national iniquity, and by their further per- 
ception that, in a few faithful men willing to suffer 
for truth and righteousness in an epoch seemingly 
given over to the corruption of covetousness, there 
is a salt which will save the corrupt nation, a light 
which will lead it through its gloom to the day of 
the Lord. Because the prophet's predictions seemed 
marvelous to those who do not understand the inex- 
orable operation of divine principles in national 
history, attention has been diverted from those 
principles which formed the real subject matter of 
the prophet's message to those apparently more 
marvelous predictions which were incidental to it. 
Hence, too often the students of prophecy have 



334 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

read the books of the Hebrew prophets, not to see 
what great fundamental principles they inculcate, 
what are the laws of national life which they make 
clear, and which may be justly applied in our time 
and to our nation, but to see how strangely their 
predictions correspond with events long posterior 
to them. 

This habit of dwelling on the marvelous has 
been strengthened by the rabbinical habit of read- 
ing into the Old Testament books what was not in 
the mind of their original writers. This rabbinical 
habit affected to some extent the writers of the 
New Testament books themselves. Thus, for ex- 
ample, Hosea, pleading with Israel, and setting 
before it the mercy and love of God, illustrated by 
the historical fact that God loved Israel when it 
was weak, feeble, good-for-naught, says, "When 
Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my 
son out of Egypt." ^ It is as if the prophet said, 
speaking in the name of Jehovah, I knew you while 
you were still in bondage, and I chose you as the 
nation to bear the message of religious truth that 
God is and that he is a just God ; for this purpose 
I chose, not the Phoenician race, mother of litera- 
ture, not the Egyptian race, at once cradle and 
grave of civilization, not the Babylonian or Chal- 
dean or Persian race with its wealth of territory 
and its concentration of power — I called you out 
of your bondage, a set of weak, willful, worthless 
slaves. When, centuries after Hosea has uttered 

1 Hosea xi. 1. 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 335 

these words, the boy Jesus is taken down into 
Egypt by Joseph and Mary, and brought back 
again, Matthew seizes this phrase, " Out of Egypt 
I called my son," and applies it to the return of 
Jesus from Egypt to Galilee.^ It is a rabbinical 
use of a prophetic writing. It is quite clear from 
the reading of the Book of Hosea itself that 
Hosea's reference was historical purely, that it 
referred to the past, not to the future. 

A still more striking illustration is afforded by 
one of the prophecies of Isaiah. Ahaz was a weak 
king, wicked in his weakness, and the nation was 
sinking under the weight of corruption which he 
had not the resolution to resist. Isaiah protests in 
vain against the policy of Ahaz, which is bringing 
ruin upon the nation. " Ask," says Isaiah, " any 
sign you please, and it shall be granted to you as a 
witness that I am speaking for Jehovah." Ahaz, 
self-willed and determined to pursue his own course, 
replies, " I will ask no sign," and, piously veiling 
his self-will, adds, " Neither will I tempt Jehovah." 
Then to him Isaiah replies with indignation, 
" Therefore the Lord himself will give you a 
sign : behold a young woman will conceive and 
bear a son, and will call his name God-with-us; 
because before the boy knows how to refuse the 
evil and choose the good, the land of whose two 
kings thou art sore afraid will be unpeopled, and 
the Lord shall bring upon thee, and thy father's 
house, days that have not come from the day that 
1 Matt. ii. 15. 



336 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Ephraim departed from Judah [that is, since the 
division of the kingdom] ; even the king of As- 
syria." ^ Here, again, the primary meaning of the 
prophet is plain : on the one hand, the kings of 
Syria and Israel shall be defeated and their lands 
overrun and desolated ; on the other, Ahaz shall 
see the result of his policy in the desolation which 
it will bring to his land. Seven centuries later 
Jesus is born, the promised Messiah, the true Im- 
manuel for whom Israel had long been looking, 
the God-with-us who was to bring salvation to the 
race. So Matthew believed ; and he seized these 
words of an ancient prophet and applied them to 
the event of his own time.^ In fact, Jesus is not 
called Immanuel, either by the angel who foretold 
his birth, by his mother, by the people among whom 
he lived, or by subsequent history ; nearly or quite 
seven centuries elapsed between the desolations of 
war which Isaiah had foretold and the birth of 
Jesus ; nor is there any adequate reason to think 
that Isaiah had, when he wrote, any anticipation of 
the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, to occur so many 
hundred years after his prophecy. 

Let the reader, then, of this volume understand, 
whether he agrees with it or not, the writer's point 
of view. This is that, though a prophet does some- 
times predict, and though his prediction is some- 

^ Isa. vii. 10-17. Polyelirome translation. See, also, The Booh 
of Isaiah, vol. i. pp. 103-118, by George Adam Smith, who thinks 
there is in this passage an indirect reference to the Messiah. 

2 Matt. i. 22, 23. 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 337 

times wonderfully fulfilled, Ms prediction and its 
fulfillment constitute neither the measure nor the 
value of his prophecy. The prophet speaks to fear, 
warning men of danger ; he speaks to hope, inspir- 
ing them to life ; but he does not to any great 
extent give detailed information respecting events 
to come. This is not his function ; for no such 
purpose was he sent into the world. He is not a 
foreteller, but a forth-teller. He speaks not of the 
future, but for another ; and that other, God. 
"Just as a dumb or retired person," says Ewald, 
" must have a speaker to speak for him and declare 
his thought, so must God, who is dumb in respect to 
the mass of men, have his messenger or speaker ; 
and hence the word ' prophet,' in its sacred sense, 
denotes him who speaks, not of himself, but is com- 
missioned by God." 1 In this sense prophets have 
lived from the time of Moses to the present time. 
Every true Christian teacher ought to be in some 
sense a prophet, not forecasting future events, not 
foretelling what is to occur, but communing with 
his God, and getting direct from the Father the 
message which he presents to those who listen to 
him, because he is the interpreter of another ; and 
that other, God. 

The prophets of the Old Testament, then, were 
first of all men of God. Not men who had reached 
the conclusion, by philosophical investigation, that 
there is a God, but men who had talked with him, 
walked with him, lived with him, and received their 
1 Prophets of the Old Testament, vol. i. p. 8. 



338 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

message from him. This at least was their faith, 
and in this faith they spoke. Because of this faith 
they were accustomed to say, " Thus saith the 
Lord." " Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers 
of Sodom," cries Isaiah.^ " The Lord God hath 
spoken, who can but prophesy ? " says Amos.^ The 
extent to which this consciousness of the divine 
presence underlies the speech of the Hebrew pro- 
phets is indicated by the fact that the single phrase 
" Thus saith the Lord " occurs more than two hun- 
dred times in the Old Testament. Several of them 
give definite accounts of the commission which they 
received from God to be the bearer of his message. 
They generally were reluctant to accept it, felt their 
inability to fulfiU it, begged to be excused. To 
Isaiah Jehovah appears in the Temple in a vision, 
and a seraph with a live coal from the altar touches 
his lips and takes away the uncleanness which un- 
fits him to be Jehovah's messenger ; to Jeremiah in 
his youth Jehovah appears, overrules his objection 
that he is but a child, and touches his mouth as a 
sign that his words shall not be his own, but Jeho- 
vah's ; to Ezekiel Jehovah appears upon the plains 
of Chaldea by the river Chebar, and when the pro- 
phet falls upon his face in fear, bids him stand 
upon his feet and be not afraid to speak the words 
that are given to him, whether Israel will hear 
or whether they will forbear ; Zechariah receives 
by night from the angel of Jehovah the strange 
symbolic visions which constitute the theme of his 

^ Isa. i. 10. 2 Amos iii. 8. 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 339 

mystical prophecies. This is the first and most dis- 
tinguishing characteristic of these prophets; they 
believe themselves peculiarly commissioned by Jeho- 
vah to speak in his name.^ 

And yet we are not to forget that this message 
which came forth from God came into, not merely 
unto, the prophet. It became a part of his nature, 
and came forth from him mixed with his own 
thoughts. These prophets were no machines, no 
amanuenses writing at dictation. They were men 
inspired with God's spirit, conscious of God's 
presence, possessing some thought or feeling or 
passion which they believed was God-given, and 
bringing their message to their people in their own 
language, and colored by their own personality. 
The differences in the form and even the spirit of 
their utterances is quite as great as is to be found 
in the utterances of any other class of writers. 
The sternness of a Carlyle is in Amos ; the gentle- 
ness of a Whittier is in Hosea; the popular en- 
thusiasm of a Wyckliffe is in Micah ; the states- 
manlike quality of a Cranmer is in Isaiah ; the 
pathos of a Tennyson in his most pathetic moods 
is in Jeremiah; the radiant hopefulness of a 
Browning in his most optimistic moods is in the 
Great Unknown. God speaks in these prophets, 
but if we would understand their message we must 
imderstand the men. 

And we must understand the age in which they 
lived, and the conditions under which they wrote, 
1 Isa. vi. ; Jer. i. 4-10 ; Ezek. i. ii. ; Zech. i. 1-4, 7 fF. 



340 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

for they are preeminently men o£ their age. Con- 
cerning the events of their age they speak ; to the 
men moved by those events they bring their mes- 
sages; by those events they are themselves edu- 
cated. It is, therefore, necessary to study them in 
connection with the events in the midst of which 
they live, and concerning which they speak. 
Without some knowledge of their times, their ut- 
terances are liable to be misunderstood, and not 
infrequently are almost unintelligible. As it would 
be impossible clearly to comprehend Jeremy Tay- 
lor's " Liberty of Prophesying " without any know- 
ledge of the life of England in the seventeenth 
century. Dr. Eliphalet Nott's famous sermon 
against dueling without knowing the story of Ham- 
ilton and Burr, the anti-slavery poems of John 
Greenleaf Whittier and the anti-slavery addresses 
of Theodore Parker and Henry Ward Beecher 
without knowing that slavery existed in republi- 
can America, so it is impossible to understand the 
scathing denunciations of Amos, the tender plead- 
ings of Hosea, the manly and virile pathos of Jere- 
miah, the hopeful visions of the Great Unknown, 
the Puritanism of Malachi, and the ecclesiasticism 
of Zechariah, without knowing the history of Israel 
from the days of Jehoshaphat to those of the Re- 
storation after the exile. 

Something more, however, than an understand- 
ing of great religious principles and the great 
national events to which the prophets apply them 
is necessary to a comprehension of the prophetic 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 341 

teaching. Spiritual sympathy with them in their 
struggle against the vicious tendencies of their 
times is necessary to a comprehension of their 
spirit, and, except as their spirit is comprehended, 
their teaching cannot be comprehended. Each of 
them might have said to their auditors, as Paul to 
the throng at Lystra, " We also are men of like 
passions with you." They were men, and into 
their human life the reader must enter, sharing it 
with them. Patriots were they, loving their coun- 
try with devotion ; but they loved righteousness 
even more, and when they saw their country grow- 
ing corrupt, they denounced the corruptionist, 
however high in station, with the fiery indignation 
of men who, because they love Jehovah, hate that 
which is evil. They shared the fears and hopes 
of the men of their time, and yet had an experi- 
ence both of fear and of hope which transcended 
that of the commonplace auditors to whom they 
addressed their warnings and their encourage- 
ments. Men of great courage of conviction were 
they — none braver in human history than these 
ancient Hebrew prophets : Elijah denouncing King 
Ahab, and challenging him to conflict before the 
people ; Nathan going to King David with his 
parable and saying to his face, " Thou art the 
man ; " Amos breaking in upon the high festivi- 
ties of the people with his message of stinging re- 
buke ; Micah denouncing the rich for their oppres- 
sions of the poor. Great men were they — among 
the greatest of the world's leaders ; sometimes 



342 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

statesmen, yet never politicians ; sometimes poets, 
yet never sentimentalists ; great thinkers, but 
never mere scholastic philosophers ; reformers, yet 
not impracticables ; historians, but neither parti- 
sans nor opportunists. 

We can better understand the characteristics 
which these prophets had in common, if we con- 
trast them with the other three great types of re- 
ligious teachers among the Hebrews, — the law- 
givers, the wise men, and the poets. 

There are three great lawgivers whose legislation 
remains in the religious literature of the Hebrews, 
— Moses, Nehemiah, and Ezra ; perhaps to these 
should be added the unknown authors of the Deu- 
teronomic and Levitical codes, although they were 
rather codifiers of existing laws than lawgivers; 
and this may also probably be said of Ezekiel, who 
like Moses was both prophet and lawgiver. The 
message of the prophets is generically and in 
spirit identical with that contained in the Book of 
the Covenant, and in the common law which grew 
out of the Book of the Covenant and finally was 
codified in the Book of Deuteronomy. So identi- 
cal are they therewith that some scholars have re- 
garded the prophets rather than Moses as the 
author of Mosaism, and Moses himself as a vague 
and possibly even unhistorical character, to whom 
the law was attributed in order to give it author- 
ity. It appears to me, however, that even the 
casual reader can discover an important difference 
between the laws of Moses as they are contained 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 343 

in the Pentateuch, including both the Levitical and 
the Deuteronomic codes, and the utterances of the 
prophets. The former were statutory in their 
tone. They appear to initiate law, to create obli- 
gations. Their spirit is fairly indicated in the 
words with which the farewell speech of Moses in 
the Book of Deuteronomy draws to its close : "See, 
I have set before thee this day life and good, and 
death and evil ; in that I command thee this day^ 
to love Jehovah thy God, to walk in his ways, 
and to keep his commandments and his statutes 
and his judgments." ^ This is rarely the language 
of the prophets. They assume the law as some- 
thing known, recognized, familiar to the people. 
They take it as a standard already established, as 
part of a covenant already entered into ; and with 
it they measure the life of the nation ; by it they 
condemn the nation ; and, condemning, they call 
on the nation to repent and return to its loyalty 
and obedience. Their language therefore is that 
of Isaiah, who refers his hearers " to the law and 
to the testimony " as something well known ; that 
of Jeremiah, who answers the self -excusing Jews, 
" ye have not obeyed the voice of Jehovah, nor 
walked in his laws, nor in his statutes, nor in his 
testimonies ; " that of Hosea, who represents Je- 
hovah as saying to the people, " seeing thou hast 
forgotten the law of thy God I will also forget thy 
children ; " that of Amos, who foretells the im- 
pending doom of Judah because " they have re- 

1 Deut. XXX. 15, 16. 



344 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

jected tlie law of Jehovali and have not kept his 
statutes." ^ Therefore is it that their message is a 
summons not to begin a life never before known, 
to enter into a covenant never before proposed to 
them, but to return to the life which they have aban- 
doned, and to renew the covenant which they have 
broken. Moses is represented as proposing a new 
covenant to Israel : " If ye will obey my voice and 
keep my covenant then ye shall be a peculiar trea- 
sure unto me above aU people ; " ^ even Joshua is 
represented as calling on them to confirm this cove- 
nant almost as though it were now made for the 
first time.^ But the summons of the prophets is 
very different ; it is a summons to Israel to remem- 
ber the forgotten law, to repent of their violation 
of it, and to return to Jehovah who has been aban- 
doned and to their covenant with him which has 
been disregarded.* Throughout, the prophets as- 
sume that the people have long possessed a divine 
law, that their life is a flagrant violation of that 
law, that they must repent and return to Jehovah 
and renew their allegiance to his law. This is not 
the language of the lawgiver. It would be as in- 
appropriate in the Book of the Covenant or even 
in the Book of Deuteronomy as would be the Ten 
Commandments in the Books of Isaiah, Amos, or 
Hosea. 

1 Isa. viii. 20 ; Jer. xliv. 23 ; Hosea iv. 6 ; Amos ii. 4. 

2 Exod. xis. 5. 

^ Josh. xxiv. 15-21. 

4 Isa. xliv. 22 ; Jer. iii. 22 ; iv. 1 ; xviii. 11 ; Ezek. xviii. 23; 
Mai. iii. 7. 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 345 

The difference between the prophets and the 
wise men is equally marked. We have seen that 
the characteristic of the wise men, as illustrated by 
the books of Proverbs and of Ecclesiastes, is that 
they inculcate ethical maxims based sometimes 
upon conscience, but more generally upon pruden- 
tial considerations. There are few or no maxims 
in the prophets. They rarely even quote a pro- 
verb, still more rarely employ the proverbial 
method. Their appeal is not to experience ; their 
theme is not the duty of man to man. It is true 
that they have much to say of the sin of inhuman- 
ity, much of the duty of considering the poor and 
the oppressed ; but the sin is almost invariably 
treated as a sin against Jehovah, the punishment 
as inflicted by Jehovah. To oppress the poor, keep 
the debtor's pledge of clothing overnight in viola- 
tion of the law, live in sensuality and intemper- 
ance, is to transgress the law of Jehovah ; to seek 
judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the father- 
less, plead for the widow, is to return to Jehovah 
and be cleansed by him.^ The teachings of the 
prophets are ethical, but the sanctions of those 
teachings are divine ; sin is more than folly, more 
than violation of law ; more than wrong inflicted 
upon a neighbor ; it is disloyalty to God — who is 
the king, the father, the husband, of his people, 
disobedience to whom is treachery in the citizen, un- 
filial conduct in the son, unfaithfulness in the wife. 

1 Amos ii. 6-8 ; Micah ii. 1, 2 ; iii. 9-12 ; Isa. iii. 15 ; v. 8-20 ; 
i. 16-18. 



346 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

The difference between the prophets and the 
poets is perhaps not so striking ; for the poet is 
also a prophet and the prophet is also a poet. 
There is reason to believe that the prophets some- 
times sang their utterances in a monotonous chant ; 
some of them are poetic in form, more of them in 
spirit.^ Yet there is a real difference between the 
poets — whether lyric, epic, or dramatic — and the 
prophets, in that the former describe experiences 
either their own or dramatically that of others, and 
leave the experience to convey its own lesson, while 
the prophets are distinctly and directly didactic. 
The poets are interpreters of life, generally of re- 
ligious life ; the prophets are teachers of truth, 
always of religious truth. The conscious object of 
the former is to express themselves, the conscious 
object of the latter to impress their auditors ; the 
former sing, the latter speak ; the former are poets 
primarily, preachers secondarily ; the latter are 
preachers primarily, poets secondarily. Speaking 
broadly, we shall not be far wrong if we say that 
the poets are didactic poets and the prophets are 
poetical teachers ; the poetry of the first is imbued 
with a religious purpose, the preaching of the sec- 
ond is imbued with a poetic spirit. 

That Jehovah is a righteous Person, that his 
laws are righteous laws, that obedience to them 
requires sobriety, humanity, and reverence, that no 

^ 1 Sam. X. 5. For poetical forms see the translations in the 
Polychrome Bible, or in The Book of Isaiah or The Book of the 
Twelve Prophets, by George Adam Smith. 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 347 

sacred ceremonial can serve as a substitute for such 
obedience, that man's inhumanity to man is a sin 
against God and that the only genuine repentance 
is a return to Jehovah and to a life of righteous- 
ness, is the common teaching of all these prophets : 
and yet their messages are as various as their char- 
acters. Amos is a moral reformer, appears sud- 
denly in the midst of Israel's greatest apparent 
prosperity but real corruption and hastening decay, 
to denounce the nation's profligacy and inhuman- 
ity, expose the falsity of hopes built on a tradi- 
tional theology and a ceremonial religion, and fore- 
tell coming disaster and doom ; Hosea is a poet, 
who has learned the deepest truths of human sin- 
fulness and divine love in the school of his own 
bitter experience, — the infidelity of his wife has 
brought home to him the guilt of Israel's disloyalty 
to Jehovah, his own long-suffering love for his wife 
has taught him the strong love of Jehovah, too 
deep to be destroyed by human sin, however dam- 
nable ; Isaiah is a statesman, strong leader of the 
people, wise counselor of kings, whose courage 
sustains the heart of the people in dire disaster, 
whose wisdom might have saved the kingdom from 
destruction had the kings followed his counsels ; 
Micah is the prophet of the poor, the religious 
socialist of his age, who denounces the greed of the 
rich and the vices of the capital, and for the na- 
tion's redemption looks not to the court or the city 
but to the country village and the ranks of the 
plain people ; Zephaniah, living in the superficial 



348 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

and transient reforms of King Josiah, perceives 
how superficial and transient they are, and utters 
the one word of warning against the hopes which 
are built upon them ; Nahum, with a fine scorn of 
imperial greatness inspired by the spirit of cruelty, 
foretells the siege and fall of Nineveh, city of 
blood and of ceaseless rapine ; Habakkuk is a 
skeptic with clinging faith, whose verse begins 
with the skeptic's cry, " O Lord, how long shall 
I cry and thou wilt not hear," and ends with the 
answer of faith, "Though the fig tree shall not 
blossom neither shall fruit be in the vines, . . . 
yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the 
God of my salvation ; " ^ Obadiah is an outraged 
idealist, whose indignation in the hour of his na- 
tion's apparent ruin cries out against the apathy of 
a kindred people gloating over his brother's mis- 
fortune ; Jeremiah is the first distinctive individual- 
ist among the Hebrew prophets, — a Huguenot in 
an age ruled by the Medici, a Savonarola in an age 
of Alexander VI., execrating himself, at times ex- 
ecrating his age and his people, at other times 
pleading with them for Jehovah and with Jehovah 
for them, with infinite pathos, and amidst the ruins 
of the old covenant destroyed by Israel's sin and 
Jehovah's consequent repudiation of it, prophesying 
a new covenant with the elect individuals saved 
from the nation's wreck, — strange, sad, self-con- 
tradictory, eloquent, pathetic, despairing, brave, a 
Protestant before Protestantism, a Puritan before 
1 Nah. iii. 1 ; Hab. i. 2 ; iii. 17, 18. 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 349 

Puritanism ; Ezekiel is the prophet of the Exile, 
endeavoring to preserve the faith of his people by 
solidifying their religious institutions and codifying 
their ecclesiastical laws, the first of the prophets 
to prophesy in writing, the literary prophet, there- 
fore, churchman among prophets, prophet among 
churchmen, unlike most churchmen of later history, 
emphasizing the universal Presence where there is 
neither Temple nor ritual, and the divine Imma- 
nence as the secret of all life and the hope of all the 
future ; the Great Unknown is the most catholic of 
all the prophets, — recognizes even in the pagan 
Emperor Cyrus the Great a messenger and ser- 
vant of Jehovah, foresees the coming of pagan 
peoples to share Israel's future glory, is the first of 
Hebrew teachers to see that suffering is not a sign 
of divine displeasure but a commission to divine 
service, first to see that the suffering for sin is to 
be cured by sinless suffering, first to foresee a Suf- 
fering Servant of Jehovah yet to come, out of the 
travail of whose soul a new Israel will be born, — of 
aU the Hebrew prophets the one with the widest 
horizon and the deepest insight; Haggai, Zecha- 
riah, and Malachi are prophets of the restoration : 
Haggai, a churchman who urges on the rebuilding 
of the Temple ; Zechariah, a contemporary of the 
same school, whose mystic visions are as untrans- 
latable into prose as those of Percivale in Tenny- 
son's " Holy Grail ; " Malachi, a Puritan prophet 
who protests against those corruptions of life and 
doctrine which always accompany an ecclesiastical 



350 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

revival : men of contrary temperament these, but 
belonging to the same epoch and produced by the 
same influences as Loyola and Luther by the Re- 
naissance, or Laud and Cartwright by the Puritan 
revival ; Joel is a moral poet of uncertain date who 
draws from so simple an incident as a devastating 
flight of locusts a symbol of the judgment day of 
Jehovah ; Jonah is a satire written by an unknown 
author on the narrowness of Israel and a testimony 
to the universality of Jehovah's lovingkindnesses 
and tender mercies ; and Daniel is latest of aU the 
prophets, and his apocalyptic visions, like those of 
his antitype in the New Testament, are still a per- 
plexity to the spiritual and a peril to the literalist. 
If we attempt to combine in a single sentence 
the message of these prophets it will be something 
like this : we learn from Amos that God is a just 
God who will not spare the guilty; from Hosea 
that he is a merciful God, tender, patient, and long- 
suffering ; from Micah that he is the God of the 
poor, and will punish those who wrong his poor ; 
from Isaiah and Nahum that he is the God of na- 
tions, the real power in all history and behind all 
powers; from Zephaniah that he cannot be de- 
ceived by pretentious and superficial reforms ; 
from Habakkuk that the soul can trust in him 
when it cannot understand his ways ; from Jere- 
miah that he is the God of individuals and that no 
nation can be righteous in his sight whose individ- 
ual members are unrighteous ; from Ezekiel that 
he is the Universal Presence, in the desert as in 



PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 351 

the Temple ; from the Great Unknown that he is 
the God of all hope and will redeem the world 
from sin and suffering by sinless suffering ; from 
Jonah that he is a God of all peoples, Jew and 
Gentile ; from the prophets of the restoration, 
Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, that the religion 
of form and the religion without form are both ac- 
ceptable to God, if there be the real spirit of faith 
and hope and love in either the one or the other ; 
and last of all, from Joel that God will come to 
judge the world with righteousness and the people 
with his truth. 

But the prophets have another function to per- 
form than to testify to the meaning of righteous- 
ness in God and in man ; the consideration of that 
function must be reserved for another chapter. 



CHAPTER XV 

PEEACHEKS OF REDEMPTION 

" By religion," says John Henry Newman, " I 
mean the knowledge of God, of his will, and of our 
duties toward him." ^ By religion the ancient He- 
brew included also the acceptance of reliance upon 
God's promises. The relation of man to God is 
one of dependency ; but a relation of dependency 
involves mutual obligations, those of the dependent 
to his superior, those of the superior to the one who 
is dependent upon him. It is the distinctive char- 
acteristic of the religious teachers of the ancient 
Hebrews that they frankly recognize this mutuality 
of obligation between God and man, between the 
Creator and the creature ; between the divine Sov- 
ereign, Father, Husband, and the human citizen, 
child, wife ; to speak more accurately, they repre- 
sent Jehovah himself as recognizing it. Jehovah 
is a King : the citizens owe loyalty to the king, but 
the king also owes protection to the citizens ; Jeho- 
vah is a Father : the child owes obedience to the 
father, but the father also owes counsel and suste- 
nance to the child ; Jehovah is a Husband : the wife 
owes fidelity to her husband, but the husband also 

1 Grammar of Assent, p. 378. 



PREACHERS OF REDEMPTION 353 

owes love and guardianship to the wife. This 
recognition of mutual obligation is implied in the 
word used to designate the relation between God 
and men, Covenant or Testament, and so identified 
with the relation which the literature seeks to de- 
scribe that it is made the title of the entire collec- 
tion, A covenant necessarily implies mutuality, 
and this mutuality is directly affirmed, and, what 
is more important, tacitly assumed by Jehovah in 
all his revelations of himself and in all his dealings 
with his people. Eeligion, in the thought of these 
Hebrew writers, consists not merely of the obliga- 
tion which man owes to God, but also and equally 
of the obligation which God has assumed toward 
man, and it is not too much to say that scarcely 
less stress is laid in the sacred writings on what 
God will do for man, than on what man ought to 
do in fulfillment of his duties toward God. In 
short, these writings are not less promises of divine 
counsel, comfort, protection, and support than they 
are summons to human loyalty and obedience. In 
this respect, as in some others, the religion of the 
ancient Hebrews is unique. The gods of the 
Greeks and Romans are represented as sometimes 
rendering special favors to special favorites, but I 
do not think any pagan religion represents the 
deity as entering into a covenant with the human 
race or even with a special people, and binding 
himself by pledges to them, so that the history of 
their national life consists of the history of his ful- 
fillment of this covenant and their fulfillment of 



354 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

it, or failure to fulfill. But this is in the Hebrew- 
history and the Hebrew literature the distinctive 
characteristic of Jehovah : he is a covenant-making 
and a covenant-keeping God. 

This mutuality of obligation between Jehovah 
and Israel is accompanied by explicit promises and 
pledges on his part to Israel. And these promises 
give to Israel's religion another distinctive pecul- 
iarity. Their religion is f orelooking, it is antici- 
patory, it appeals to hope, it is an incentive to 
progress. The golden age of the ancient Hebrews 
was in the future; that of other ancient nations was 
in the past. In general, pagan religion is essen- 
tially conservative if not reactionary. It recalls or 
imagines a position of glory from which the nation 
has fallen ; it turns the thoughts of the people 
toward the past ; it rehearses their sins and de- 
mands of them some expiation; it is so busy in 
providing this expiation that it has no time or 
thought to interpret present duties or inspire future 
hopes. It is true that the Hebrew religion had in 
its legends the story of a garden of innocence and 
a fall. But that story once told was never repeated. 
It is not referred to again in all the Hebrew litera- 
ture. Never does poet or prophet recall to the 
people their Eden or call on them to go back to it. 
It is true that the sins of Israel are clearly depicted 
and judicially condemned, and the people are sum- 
moned to repentance. But they are told to show 
their repentance by a new life ; Daniel's message 
to Nebuchadnezzar summarizes the message of all 



PREACHERS OF REDEMPTION 355 

the prophets to Israel: "Break off thy sins by- 
righteousness." The burden of the pagan priest 
is atonement for past sin ; the burden of the He- 
brew prophet is performance of present duty and 
pressing forward toward future ideals. And these 
ideals are put before the people as possible because 
they are the people of Jehovah, and Jehovah is a 
covenant-keeping God, who recognizes mutuality 
of obligation between himself and his people, and 
will forgive and forget the past, and give them wis- 
dom and strength for the future. 

This anticipatory quality, this f orelooking based 
on the promises of a God who is a covenant-maker 
and a covenant-keeper, appears in the very earliest 
legends of this peculiar people ; and it distinguishes 
their earliest legends from the somewhat analogous 
ones of other peoples. It is true that these legends 
were probably reduced to writing at a later date in 
Hebrew history ; but it is also true that the writing 
probably represents the earliest legends, aad so the 
earliest faith. The creation hymn with which the 
Book of Genesis opens declares that God has cre- 
ated the world for man, and has given it to him to 
possess it, and bids him have dominion over it and 
over all which it contains. Such a command accom- 
panying such a gift is itself a promise of wisdom 
and power adequate to accomplish the so great 
achievement. The legend of the Fall is accom- 
panied by a promise at once greater and more ex- 
plicit : the serpent which has brought disobedience 
into the garden shall bite man's heel, that is, shall 



356 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

poison the whole human race, but the seed of the 

woman shall crush the serpent's head, that is, shall 
at last destroy the sin which has poisoned and 
embittered human life. As the theme of a sym- 
phony is indicated in the opening movement, so in 
those prehistoric legends appear the double task 
given to man and the promise of its fulfillment : 
he shall struggle with nature, but he shall conquer 
her and make her his servant ; he shall struggle 
with moral evil, and it shall embitter his life, 
but he shall utterly destroy it. With the com- 
mission and the warning is the promise of final 
success. 

This note of promise is sounded throughout 
the Hebrew literature ; this attitude of expectancy 
characterizes the devout and faithful in Israel in 
aU stages of the national history. In the prehis- 
toric legends the Flood is followed with the bow set 
in the clouds as a sign of God's covenant with 
Noah and with aU. flesh; Abraham the father of 
Israel is called out of the land of idolatry by the 
promise that he shall be made the father of a great 
nation in a land which shall be shown to him; 
Moses is commissioned in the desert to call Israel 
out of bondage to a promised land to be given to 
them ; at Mount Sinai not the law only is given, 
but the promise is also given that if they keep 
their covenant, God will make of them a kingdom 
of priests, a holy nation ; to Joshua Jehovah re- 
peats the promise that he wiU give the land to 
Israel, if their leader is strong and courageous and 



PREACHERS OF REDEMPTION 357 

obedient.^ The land once possessed, the promises 
take on a new form. They are now of a king and 
a kingdom ; a king to sit on the throne of David, 
to rule in righteousness, over a peaceful kingdom 
with extensive domain, chastened if he falls into 
iniquity, but not deserted by his God.^ When 
troubles gather about the kingdom, the promise 
changes again ; it is no longer of a land, — the 
land has been given ; nor of a kingdom, — the 
kingdom has been organized ; it is of deliverance. 
The nation is in darkness, but it shall see a great 
light ; the rod of the oppressor shall be broken ; 
the armor of the armed man and the garments 
rolled in blood shall be fuel for the fire ; a Prince 
shall be born who shall be called Wonderful, Coun- 
sellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince 
of Peace; of the increase of his government and of 
peace there shall be no end.^ The promises of 
Jehovah are all conditional ; they are parts of a 
mutual covenant. The conditions are not fulfilled 
by Israel, and therefore the rod of the oppressor is 
not broken ; Jerusalem is destroyed and Judah is 
carried into captivity ; but the promise still abides, 
though its form changes. It is now a promise of 
restoration ; a remnant shall be saved, and of this 
remnant a new Israel shall be created and a new 
covenant made with them, and they shall no longer 

1 Gen. i. 28, 29; iii. 15; ix. 8-lY; xii. 1-3; xiii. 14-17; xii. 
1-7 ; Ex. iii. 7, 8 ; xix. 5, 6 ; Jos. i. 1-9. 

2 2 Sam. vii. 11-16; Ps. Ixxii. 

3 Isa. vii. 10-17 ; ix. 2-7. 



358 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

need priest to minister to them nor prophet to teach 
them, for " they shall all know me from the least 
unto the greatest." ^ Thus throughout this history 
of the promises of Jehovah and the expectancy of 
Israel there is a common theme : it is the establish- 
ment, or the deliverance, or the recovery and resto- 
ration, of the kingdom of Jehovah ; and is generally 
accompanied by, centred around, and founded upon 
a representative of Jehovah yet to appear. But 
there are also great differences in the promises and 
the anticipations. The promise is sometimes of 
the establishment of a kingdom not yet existing, 
sometimes the deliverance of a kingdom environed 
by foes, sometimes the restoration of a kingdom 
apparently utterly destroyed. Sometimes the cen- 
tral figure is a priest, sometimes a prophet, some- 
times a king, sometimes a Suffering Servant of 
Jehovah ; ^ sometimes the kingdom is one of terres- 
trial glory, in which the implements of war will 
become implements of peaceful agriculture and 
even the wild beasts will be domesticated and the 
poisonous creatures will lose their venom; some- 
times it is purely spiritual, a kingdom without ark, 
or temple, or ritual ; sometimes it involves the 
building of a new temple, the reorganization of the 
priesthood and the rehabilitation of the sacrifices ; ^ 
sometimes Israel is represented as conquering the 
pagan nations which are destroyed, sometimes the 

1 Jer. xxxi. 1-9, 31-34. 

2 Deut. xTiii. 15-19 ; Num. xxv. 12, 18 ; Isa. liii. 

3 Isa. ii. 2-4 : xi. 6-9 : Jer. iii. 16 : Ezek. xi. 17-20, xl.-xlviii. 



PREACHERS OF REDEMPTION 359 

pagan nations enter into Jerusalem and share 
Israel's glory with her ; sometimes the promise is 
in form one to be fulfilled in that generation, 
sometimes it has in it a suggestion of a far-away 
look down the ages, the hope in the midst of im- 
penetrable darkness of a distant dawn.^ 

It does not come within the province of this vol- 
ume to trace out these promises of the prophets 
and hopes of Israel in detail. All I attempted to 
do in treating of the law of Israel, whether civil 
or ecclesiastical, was to indicate its general charac- 
ter ; this is all I can do in treating of Israel's 
hopes.2 But I may indicate the nature of this 
aspect of Hebrew religious teaching by the two 
examples furnished by the ministry of the two 
greatest of the prophets of redemption, — Hosea 
and the Great Unknown. 

Hosea lived in the closing years of Israel's 
national existence, when the universal corruption 
was beginning to bring forth its inevitable results 

^ Compare Obadiah with Isaiah chap. liv. and Ix. 

2 For a more careful study of this aspect of prophecy as viewed 
by the modern school the reader is referred to Messianic Prophecy ^ 
by Charles A. Briggs, D. D. ; Messianic Prophecy, by Dr. Ed- 
ward Riehm ; The Old Testament Prophecy of the Completion of the 
Kingdom of God, by Dr. C. von Orelli ; IsraeVs Messianic Hope, 
by G. S. Goodspeed ; The Hope of Israel, by F. H. Woods, D. D. 
The Table of Prophecies or Allusions to Christ in the Appendix 
to Bagster's Bible, or similar tables in any of the Teacher's Bibles, 
may be examined to advantage ; but the student will need to ex- 
amine the Old Testament passages there referred to in connection 
with the historical events with which they are directly connected, 
— otherwise he will be liable to be misled. 



360 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

in universal disorder and approaching dissolution. 
In twelve years seven " puppet kings," as Hosea 
contemptuously called them, reigned over Israel. 
Of these seven kings four were assassinated. Ke- 
volution followed revolution, but no change brought 
reformation. " Shallum slew Zechariah ; Menahem 
slew Shallum ; Pekah slew the son of Menahem ; 
Hoshea slew Pekah. The whole kingdom of Israel 
was a military despotism, and, as in the Roman 
Empire, those in command came to the throne ; 
Baasha, Zimri, Omri, Jehu, Menahem, Pekah, held 
military office before they became kings." ^ 

The public troubles would have been quite 
enough to make sore the heart of so tender a man 
as Hosea ; but he had personal troubles which might 
have made, but did not make it bitter. His refer- 
ences to them are brief and enigmatical, but from 
them it is not difficult to construct the tragic story 
of his domestic life. He married. His wife was 
unfaithful to him. His first child he recognized 
as his own, and named him Jezreel, from the 
famous battlefield of Israel. Then a daughter was 
born, but not until he had discovered the infidelity 
of his wife, although he had not put her away. 
Two years later a son was born. He had as little 
faith in the legitimacy of the son as in that of the 
daughter. The one he called "Not knowing a 
father's love," or " The unloved one ; " the other 
he called " No kin of mine." Still he did not di- 
vorce his wife, nor send her away from him. He 

1 The Minor Prophets, by E, B. Pusey, D. D., vol. i. pp. 9, 10. 



PREACHERS OF REDEMPTION 361 

was living in an age like that of the Stuarts in 
England, when unchastity among men was re- 
garded as honorable rather than shameful, and 
perhaps he thought a time in which man justified 
unchastity in himself was not one in which man 
should be vindictive toward an unchaste woman. 
Certainly he did not turn his faithless wife away 
from him. But she grew weary of him, — perhaps 
of his very piety and love, — and abandoned him. 
Prophets have rarely been rich men, either in olden 
or in modern times. And she was ambitious; 
eager for wealth and what wealth could give her. 
She abandoned her husband for some other lover, 
whose name is unknown to us, who would give 
her earrings and jewels and fine dresses. The re- 
sult was inevitable. She sank lower and lower ; 
went from lover to lover ; and finally sold herself 
into a life of public harlotry. But though Hosea 
had never forgotten, he had always forgiven her ; 
and when he finally found her a slave — by what 
process he traced her and discovered her he does 
not tell us — he brought her back, though she had 
fallen so low that he paid for her less than would 
be paid for one of the cheaper and poorer slaves. 
Her beauty and her charm were gone ; love for 
her was impossible ; and when he took her he said 
to her. No more wife of mine are you, no more 
husband of yours am I, but I will be your guardian 
and your protector. And there the story ends. 

Wise is the man who knows how to extract 
honey from the thistle ; wise the man who knows 



362 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

how out of his profound sorrow to learn lessons of 
God's love and God's truth. Such a wise man 
was Hosea. He did not devote himseK to a dis- 
cussion of the problem of moral evil. He did not 
even consider the question, Does God send trouble ? 
But he said to himself : This experience has not 
been sent to me in vain; it was a part of the 
divine plan that I should have such a wife, and 
such an experience with her, and that I should 
learn some lesson from it: what is that lesson? 
And he learned it ; and this was the lesson that he 
learned : That God is the faithful lover, and the 
unrighteous nation is the unfaithful wife ; that 
sin against God is a sin, not against law chiefly, 
but against love ; and love is infinite and eternal 
and cannot be destroyed. His hard experience 
of bitter personal grief he accepted as a parable, 
and out of this parable he learned for himself and 
taught to others the lesson of Israel's sin and 
Jehovah's mercy. 

The story of Hosea illustrates the spirit and 
method of the prophets. They were teachers of 
their own time and to their own time ; they learned 
the truth from their own experience and taught it 
to their own generation. They were sometimes 
mistaken in the immediate applications of that 
truth, as Hosea was. He fondly hoped that Israel 
would awake before it was too late, in response 
to Jehovah's love, as perhaps he had hoped to 
awaken conscience if not love in his unfaithful 
wife by his own fidelity. In both cases his imme- 



PREACHERS OF REDEMPTION 363 

diate hope was but a dream. He thus conceives 
God expressing his joy in the repentance and re- 
turn of his people to him : — 

" I will heal their backshding, I will love them freely : 
for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as 
the dew unto Israel : he shall blossom as the Hly, and 
cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall 
spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his 
smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under his shadow 
shall return ; they shall revive as the corn, and blossom 
as the vine : the scent thereof shall be as the wine of 
Lebanon. Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any 
more with idols ? I have answered, and will regard 
him : I am like a green fir tree ; from me is thy fruit 
found." 1 

But the people of the Northern Kingdom, to 
whom Hosea prophesied, never did return to Je- 
hovah; they abandoned their religion when they 
went into captivity, and in losing their religion lost 
their nationality, and have forever disappeared from 
the world's history. Looking for the Lost Tribes 
of Israel is like looking for the drops of rain which 
have fallen on the Great Desert, or for the cloud 
which the sun has drunk up in a July sky.^ But 
the love of God which Hosea experienced is eter- 

1 Hosea xiv. 4-8. 

2 It does not cotne within the scope of these articles to enter 
into a discussion of any of the disputed questions of Biblical 
history or Biblical criticism. It must suffice here to say that 
the notion that the Lost Tribes of Israel have reappeared in the 
Anglo-Saxon or any other race has no historical warrant, and 
rests wholly upon a view of prophecy the literalism of which 
history proves to be incorrect. 



364 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

iial, and the power of that love and the joy of that 
love in the return of the repentant are eternal, 
and in this love, rejoicing to rescue from sin who- 
ever will accept rescue, lies the secret of all resto- 
ration to life from apostasy, national or individual. 
Hosea saw God truly ; for Israel he hoped beyond 
measure. 

The prophecies of the Great Unknown are con- 
tained in the last chapters of Isaiah, — from the for- 
tieth to the sixty-sixth, — apparently one prophecy, 
in which an unknown prophet gathers up the les- 
sons which God had taught to Judah through sev- 
enty years of captivity, and repeats them for the 
instruction of the world in all time to come. He 
is sometimes called the Second Isaiah ; he is more 
properly designated as the Great Unknown. His 
prophecies are bound up with those of an Isaiah 
who lived a century before ; but the circumstances 
and the messages of the two are widely different.^ 
One prophesied before the captivity, the other as 
the captivity drew to its close. The preface to the 
prophecies of the one is a vehement denunciation 

1 All scholars of the modern or literary school agree that Isaiah 
chapters xl-lxri. were written by a different -writer than Isaiah 
the son of Amoz, and at the close of the captivity. The inciden- 
tal references to Cyrus (Isa. xliv. 28 ; xlv. 1), who was not liv- 
ing in the time of the first Isaiah, the differences in style, the 
differences in theme and spirit, and the different commissions, all 
point to this conclusion. The only reason for regarding these 
later chapters as by the author of the previous prophecies is that 
this is the traditional view, and that the prophecies were bound 
up together. 



PREACHERS OF REDEMPTION 365 

of the Jews as rulers of Sodom and the people of 
Gomorrah, and the prophecies themselves are full 
of warnings of the impending judgment of God 
upon the nation ; the preface to the other begins 
with " Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people ; " goes 
on to declare that they have suffered the penalty 
which had been threatened, and learned the lesson 
which that penalty was meant to teach ; and the 
theme of the subsequent prophecies is the approach- 
ing redemption of the nation and its restoration to 
its land, its city, and its temple. Each of the two 
prophets, Isaiah the son of Amoz, and the Great 
Unknown, has given an account of his call to the 
ministry. That of Isaiah is given in the sixth 
chapter of the Book of Isaiah ; that of the Great 
Unknown in the fortieth chapter. The latter's call 
is simpler and less dramatic than that of his pre- 
decessor, but his message is not less explicitly 
given to him : — 

" Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. 

Speak ye tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her 

That her hard service is accomplished, her debt of guilt is dis- 
charged, 

That she has received from Jehovah's hand double for all her sins. 

Hark ! there is a cry : 

Voice. " Clear ye in the wilderness the way of Jehovah, 

Make plain in the desert a highway for our God, 

Let every mountain and hill sink down, and every valley be up- 
lifted, 

And let the steep ground become level, and the rough country 
plain ! 

And the glory of Jehovah will be revealed, and all flesh will see it 
together, for the mouth of Jehovah has spoken it. 

The Prophet. "Hark! 



366 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

The Voice. " Cry ! 
The Prophet. " What shaU I cry ? 
.All flesh is grass, and all the strength thereof like the flowers of 

field ; 
The grass withers, the flowers fade, because the breath of Jehovah 

has blown thereon. 
The Voice. " The grass withers, the flowers fade ; 
But the Word of our God stands for ever." ^ 

This is the fundamental message of the Great 
Unknown : Men are like flowers of the field, liv- 
ing to-day, perishing to-morrow; nations, institu- 
tions, political and religious, pass like shadows 
across the mountains ; shadows we are and shadows 
we pursue ; and yet, behind them aU, manifesting 
himself through them all, vocal in all history, re- 
vealing himself in all phenomena, is God. The 
grass withers, the flowers fade, but the manifesta- 
tion and utterance of the Eternal abides forever and 
speaks through all transitory phenomena. This is 
the fundamental message of the Great Unknown. 
In some sense like that of Moses, like that of 
Hosea, like that of the First Isaiah, like that of the 
unknown writer of Deuteronomy, like that of later 
prophets, even down to our own time, is this word 
of prophecy : The Eternal abides forever, and all 
phenomena are but the ever-changing manifesta- 
tions of his ever unchangeable Presence. 

But if Isaiah shared this message with other and 
previous prophets, he learned one lesson and taught 
one truth which no prophet before his time had 
seen and few even of Christianly instructed teach- 
ers have seen more clearly. 

^ Isa. xl. 1-8. Polychrome translation, modified. 



PREACHERS OF REDEMPTION 367 

Great men give their message to the age in which 
they live ; great men also grow out of the age in 
which they live. If there could have been no Exo- 
dus without a Moses, there could have been no Moses 
without an Exodus. If there could have been no Re- 
formation without a Luther, there could have been 
no Luther without a Reformation. If there could 
have been no Puritan revolt without a CromweU, 
there could have been no Cromwell without a Puri- 
tan revolt. If Lincoln led us safely through the 
Civil War, the Civil War led Lincoln safely from 
the Illinois politician to the world statesman. It 
is the distinctive characteristic of great men that 
their hearts are open to the influences by which 
they are surrounded, and hence open to hear the 
voice of God in current events, and to learn the 
lesson which passing history has for them. The 
annalist simply narrates events ; the prophet sees 
behind them the Word of God, and gives interpre- 
tation to the events. The Great Unknown was in 
this sense the product of the age to which he spoke. 
His lesson was learned in the school of experience ; 
his message was taught to him by contemporaneous 
history ; he was the child of the Exile ; — and in 
this Exile he learned a lesson which could be 
learned only in the school of suffering. Israel's 
great teachers had been preeminently the sufferers 
of the nation — just men suffering for the unjust : 
Amos, the righteous, bearing the burden of a most 
unrighteous people ; Hosea, the loyal, bearing the 
burden of a most unloyal people ; Micah, the peas- 



368 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

ant prophet, bearing the burdens of the peasant 
poor; Isaiah, the strong-hearted hater of corrup- 
tion, living a lifelong martyrdom and dying a mar- 
tyr's death ; Jeremiah, weeping bitter tears for 
sins that were not his own. And the Great Un- 
known dimly sees what even now the Church of 
Christ sees not too clearly — that salvation comes 
through sorrow, that the suffering ones are the 
victorious ones, that the redemption of the nation 
must come, not by a crowned king, but by a Suf- 
fering Servant. Sometimes this suffering servant 
appears to the prophet to be the entire nation suf- 
fering for its own sins and for the sins of the world, 
and working out its own redemption by its own 
suffering; sometimes to be some one especially 
chosen out of that nation, suffering with and 
for them ; sometimes the prophet himself ; in one 
notable ode the prophet seems to see dimly in the 
vista of the future a single figure bearing in his 
own person the burdens of humanity, a Sinless 
Sufferer by his suffering bringing healing to 
others : ^ 

" Who indeed can yet beiieye our revelation ? 

And the arm of Jehovah — to whom has it disclosed itself ? 

" He grew up as a sapling before us, 

And as a sprout from a root in dry ground, 

He had no form nor majesty, 

And no beauty that we should delight in him. 

" Despised was he, and forsaken of men, 

A man of many pains, and familiar with sickness, 

1 Isa, xHv. 1, 2, 21; xlii. 1-4; xlix. 5-10; lii. 13-15. 



PREACHERS OF REDEMPTION 369 

Yea, like one from whom men hide the face, 
Despised, and we esteemed him not. 

** But our sicknesses, alone, he hore, 
And our pains — he carried them, 
Whilst we esteemed him stricken, 
Smitten of God, and afflicted. 

" But alone he was humiliated because of our rebellions, 
Alone he was crushed because of our iniquities ; 
A chastisement, all for our peace, was upon him. 
And to us came healing through his stripes. 

" All we, like sheep, had gone astray, 
We had turned, every one to his own way. 
While Jehovah made to light upon him 
The guilt of us all. 

" He was treated with rigor, but he resigned himself, 
And opened not his mouth, 
Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. 
And like a sheep that before her shearers is dumb. 

" Through an oppressive doom was he taken away. 
And as for his fate, who thought thereon, 
That he had been cut off out of the land of the living, 
That for my people's rebellion he had been stricken to death ? 

" And his grave was appointed with the rebellious. 
And with the wicked his tomb. 
Although he had done no injustice, 
Nor was there deceit in his mouth. 

" But it had pleased Jehovah to crush and to humiliate him. 
K he were to make himself an offering for guilt. 
He would see a posterity, he would prolong his days. 
And the pleasure of Jehovah would prosper in his hands. 



" He would deliver from anguish his soul, 
Would cause him to see light to the full. 



370 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

" With knowledge thereof my Servant will interpose for many, 
And take up the load of their iniquities. 
Therefore shall he receive a possession among the great, 
And with the strong shall he divide spoil. 

" Forasm^uch as he poured out his life-hlood, 
And let himself be reckoned with the rebellious, 
While it was he who had borne the sin of many. 
And for the rebellious had interposed." ^ 

Did the Great Unknown, looking through the 
centuries, get a glimpse of Calvary, of the blood- 
stained face and the thorn-crowned brow, or did 
he only learn from the anguish of the past that 
all victory comes through battle and all salvation 
through suffering ? Did he only see the great 
generic truth, which too many men have failed to 
see, even though it is focused and centralized in 
the Passion of Jesus the Christ ? I do not know ; 
only this I know : that nowhere, not even by Paul, 
is that truth more splendidly illustrated in litera- 
ture than in this fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and 
nowhere has it such divine illustration in history 
as in the suffering and death of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Of the great men of Hebrew history — save only 
Jesus of Nazareth, who can be classified with no 
race and no epoch, since he belongs to all human- 
ity and all time — the three greatest are Moses, 
the Great Unknown, and Paul. The first is an 
indistinct figure; concerning his real relation to 
the Hebrew people much more has been imagined 
than is known; but history will always regard 

^ Isa. liii., Polychrome Bible. 



PREACHERS OF REDEMPTION 371 

him as the great lawgiver, and always impute 
to him the foundations of those free institutions 
which the Jewish nation has given to the world. 
The second is still more indistinct. His name 
will never be known until God shall unroll the 
records of his servants' histories in the luminous 
glory of eternity. But he is of all the prophets 
the most majestic in his style, as the most spiritual 
in his message. The truth that God is one, and 
is a righteous God, and demands righteousness of 
his children, and will accept nothing less and asks 
for nothing more, he might have learned from 
Amos and Hosea and Micah and Isaiah and Jere- 
miah and Ezekiel; but he added what none of 
them saw, the truth that the sorrowing ones are 
the triumphant ones, that suffering love is conquer- 
ing love, that sorrow is victor. Christ's life and 
death will illustrate and exemplify this truth. 
Paul, the poet philosopher of the first century, will 
expound and apply it. But neither literature nor 
life has any higher message to give to the world 
than the message of this prophet, who has exem- 
plified his own doctrine of self-abnegation by leav- 
ing his writings to be bound up with those of a 
predecessor, while he himself remains forever un- 
known. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 

Most of us can remember, and some of us still 
entertain, an opinion respecting tlie Bible some- 
thing like tbe following : That there were in past 
history some thirty or forty men who were specially 
inspired of God to make known to the human race 
the truth respecting his nature and his law — truth 
which was undiscoverable by human reason, but 
which it was necessary to know in order to future 
salvation ; ^ that these men wrote what God told 
them to write, and what they thus wrote constitutes 
the Bible. Sometimes it was contended that they 
were simply amanuenses and wrote by dictation, 
word for word, what God directed them; some- 
times, and in later times more generally, it was 
believed that a certain human element entered into 
their writing, but it was supposed that they had 
what is called plenary inspiration, that is, that they 
were inspired upon all topics on which they wrote, 
and that on all topics on which they wrote they 
were infallibly accurate. Some of a more liberal 
or lax faith held that this inspiration did not 
extend to all the topics on which they wrote, but 
only to the moral and religious topics ; that they 

1 See, for example, Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. i. § 1. 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 373 

might be in error in their figures, historical dates, 
or even scientific statements ; but that in every- 
thing they said concerning the nature of God, the 
duties of man toward God, and the duties of men 
toward one another, they were infallibly accurate. 
Whichever of these views was taken, it was assumed 
that, so far as morals and religion are concerned, 
the Bible is an infallible standard of faith and 
practice, that whatever errors may have crept into 
it have been due to transmission, and not to ori- 
ginal mistake on the part of the writers. The argu- 
ment for this conclusion was very simple. The 
Bible, it is said, is the Word of God, and God is a 
God of truth, not of error. Into the Word of God, 
therefore, no errors can have crept ; or if they have, 
it has been through human transmission, — in the 
original autographs there could be no error. 

This view of the Bible leads into many intellec- 
tual and moral difficulties, so that to many of us it 
has become both intellectually and spiritually un- 
thinkable. I do not propose to indicate those dif- 
ficulties ; there are enough engaged in that work ; 
it is not necessary to duplicate their endeavors. 
My object in this closing chapter is to state the 
other and modern view, and in doing this, frankly 
to reaffirm that, in my judgment, between the 
ancient and the modern view there is a radical dif- 
ference ; that those of us who hold the modern view 
do not merely hold that there are some errors in 
the Bible which have crept in by transmission, nor 
that there are some errors in the Bible in scientific 



374 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

and historical statements which are of no special 
consequence, nor even that here and there some 
errors may have crept in respecting moral and 
religious truth. We hold an entirely different con- 
ception of the origin, the nature, and the growth of 
Jhe Bible. 

In the new library building at Washington, the 
artist has undertaken to interpret by symbolic fig- 
ures upon the interior of the dome the several func- 
tions of the great nations in the world's history. 
Each nation is represented by an allegorical picture 
with a legend underneath. The legend for Judea 
is " Keligion ; " for Greece, " Philosophy ; " for 
Eome, " Administration ; " for Germany, " Print- 
ing ; " for America, " Science." The artist has 
perceived and interpreted a great fundamental 
spiritual truth — that to every nation God gives a 
special mission ; that as the Washington Monument 
was built, every State contributing a stone to its 
erection, so the kingdom of God is built in the his- 
tory of the world, every nation contributing some- 
thing ; that in that great development of the human 
race, which the scientists call evolution and the 
Christian calls redemption, each nation has had 
some part to fulfill; that in that great progress 
toward what political economy calls democracy and 
religious faith perceives to be the kingdom of God, 
every nation has some share. 

The message of the Hebrew people appears and 
reappears in the Hebrew writers. The Bible is not 
merely an anthology of Hebrew literature. It is 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 375 

not merely a collection of various messages from 
prophets and apostles to the churcli of the olden 
time — the Jewish — or the church of the more 
modern time — the Christian. It is true, these pro- 
phets were messengers to the people of Israel, but 
they were more than that. They were interpreters 
of Israel to itself. It was their function to do 
what is the work of the prophet in all ages, to 
pierce beneath the mere temporary experience, the 
mere mask of humanity, and discern the innermost 
light of the soul, which is itself the life of God, and 
bring it to consciousness. There was a message of 
Moses, and of David, and of Isaiah, and of Paul ; 
but in all these messages, uniting them all and 
making them one great message, there was a mes- 
sage of Israel to the world, and this message of 
Israel to the world the Bible interprets to us. 

In reading the history and literature of the 
Hebrew race as they are contained in the Bible the 
omissions appear to the thoughtful student as strik- 
ing as the contributions. There is nothing indi- 
cating that the Hebrew people contributed anything 
whatever to art. Sculpture and painting were ap- 
parently forbidden to them, lest the paintings and 
the statues should become the objects of idolatrous 
veneration. They contributed nothing to architec- 
ture, save in the structure of a temple devoted to 
their religion, and that appears, from the accounts 
of it which have come down to us, to have been 
imitated from the Temple of the Egyptians. They 
contributed nothing to the world's music. In liter- 



376 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

ature they did nothing for literature's sake, — all 
their literature is a vehicle for the conveyance of 
ethical or spiritual life. All the great controver- 
sies in the nation were religious controversies ; — 
they fought no battles for civil liberty, they had 
no Kossuth, — their controversies all turned upon 
questions respecting the nature of God and the 
obligations of man toward God. They were not 
preeminently a spiritual people ; but their life had 
to do almost exclusively with ethical and spiritual 
problems. This people, thus dealing with religion, 
existed as a nation for about twelve centuries, 
beginning with the time of Moses and ending with 
the time of Christ, when the organic existence of 
the nation came to an end, and the people were 
dispersed. During this time their life found its 
expression in their literature, as the life of all peo- 
ples finds its expression in literature. It is their 
life thus expressed which I have endeavored to 
interpret in this volume. Literature, however, does 
not represent primarily the common thoughts of 
the common people ; it is the expression of the 
highest and best thoughts of the leaders of the 
people. Goethe is essentially German, but not all 
Germans could have written " Faust." Shakespeare 
is essentially English, but not all Englishmen could 
have written " Hamlet." The character of the peo- 
ple appears in their great leaders ; the life of the 
people is represented by their great minds. What- 
ever may be said of the ancient Hebrews as a race, 
the leaders of the Hebrew people were essentially 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 377 

religious. What interested them were the religious 
questions ; and their literature, so far as it has been 
preserved to us, deals almost exclusively with the 
great religious problems — the nature of God, the 
nature of man, the relationship between God and 
man, and the way in which man can be brought 
into right relationships with his God. This litera- 
ture constitutes the Old Testament. 

The Old Testament, then, according to that mod- 
ern conception which underlies this volume, is the 
record of the message of Israel to the world ; it is 
the literature of a people commissioned by God to 
search out, receive, and communicate to the world 
the answer to these four questions : — 

Who is God ? 

What is man ? 

What is the right relationship between God and 
man? 

How can that right relationship be brought 
about ? 

This literature is, however, not primarily the ex- 
pression of the common thought of the nation on 
these subjects ; it is the expression of the thought 
of their great spiritual leaders. Often that thought 
is expressed in antagonism to the public sentiment ; 
but the errors against which their leaders inveigh 
are not primarily political or social errors, but re- 
ligious errors. Their errors and their right judg- 
ments, their beliefs and their disbeliefs, their vir- 
tues and their vices, all mark this nation as one 
pondering the problems of religion. 



378 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

The Old Testament is the selected literature of 
an elect people. I say the selected literature, be- 
cause there are some books written during these 
twelve or thirteen centuries and still extant, which 
are not in our Protestant Bible, and others referred 
to or quoted from in the Bible which have perished, 
and doubtless still others which have so absolutely- 
perished that there is no reference to them what- 
ever. What we have in the Old Testament is 
what in scientific terms would be called the sur- 
vival of the fittest ; it is those words of the great 
leaders of a great people on the problems of reli- 
gion which had such a quality that they could sur- 
vive the sifting of the centuries. 

This literature is pervaded by a religious spirit. 
There are myths ; they are the vehicle of religious 
truth. There are legends ; they show how far back 
in the patriarchal age this people was pondering 
the problem of religion ; how its very progenitor, 
Abraham, centuries before the nation was bom, 
was puzzled by the question of God, and left his 
native land and turned his back upon all the un- 
satisfying idolatries that surrounded him, to see if 
he could find some better knowledge and some 
better fellowship with God than any which those 
idolatries furnished to him. It has folk-lore ; the 
folk-lore shows us that the stories which the mo- 
thers told their children were pervaded by the 
same spirit of faith in God and of humanity to 
man. It has lyrics ; with possibly two or three 
exceptions they are not love songs, nor patriotic 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 379 

songs, but songs of praise to God, or of penitence 
because of sin against him, or of sorrow because of 
exile from him, or of gratitude upon return to him. 
It has a drama of love ; this drama is for the pur- 
pose of illustrating that loyalty of love which is 
the foundation of the family. It has a great epic 
drama ; this drama deals with the relation of the 
soul to God in time of sorrow and of doubt. It 
has a romantic history ; not that of a great nation, 
not that of the heroes of a great nation, but that 
of the way in which God dealt with his people and 
the way in which his people dealt with their God. 
It has eloquent though fragmentary orations ; they 
are not political or literary ; they aU deal with 
the problems of the religious life, social or individ- 
ual. There is law; its foundation is in the pre- 
amble to the Hebrew constitution : " God spake all 
these words, saying." From the opening verse in 
the collection, " In the beginning God created the 
heavens and the earth," to the closing verse, " God 
shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children," 
these writings — law, history, legend, folk-lore, 
drama, lyrics, proverbs, oratory — have but one 
object, to give the answer of a divinely illuminated 
consciousness to the questions, Who is God ? What 
is man ? What is the right relationship between 
God and man ? How can that right relationship 
be brought about ? 

According to one conception of the Old Testa- 
ment, thirty or forty men, unique in character, 
aud separated from all their fellow men by their 



380 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

extraordinary gifts or their extraordinary privi- 
leges, from some higH and unscalable mountain top 
hand down to us a message, as the angel Gabriel 
was supposed to have handed down to Mohammed 
the message of God written upon sheets of silk. 
According to the other conception, we see a great 
people climbing the mountain toward God. We 
see them sometimes in the light, sometimes strug- 
gling through the mists and the darkness ; at times 
wandering to the right hand or to the left, at times 
halting altogether or falling back discouraged ; 
now stumbling and falling, now getting upon their 
feet again and pushing on ; we hear the voices of 
their leaders, rebuking, counseling, entreating, com- 
manding, encouraging them ; their voices rebuke, 
counsel, entreat, command, encourage us also ; and 
we dare to believe that where this people have 
climbed we too can climb, and that the God with 
whom they have talked on the mountain top will 
talk to us also, though we, too, stumble, and turn 
aside, and fall, and sometimes forget ourselves and 
our God. These are the two conceptions of the 
Bible. It is idle to ignore the radical difference 
between the two.^ I accept, frankly and unreserv- 
edly, the second.^ 

The message of Israel in answer to the four 
great religious questions is first of all that God is 
one. This now seems alphabetic; but for centu- 
ries after the prophet declared, " Hear, O Israel, 
the Lord our God is one Lord ! " ^ no other people 

1 Deut. vi. 4. 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 381 

believed it. Philosophers occasionally held mono- 
theism as an esoteric doctrine, but polytheism was 
the popular and dominant faith. Next was the 
message, God is Spirit. And since only spirit 
meets spirit, only through the spiritual can man 
have communion with the Eternal, therefore deity 
is not to be worshiped by images or pictures or 
physical devices of any description. This too is 
quite plain to those who, brought up in a Christian 
atmosphere, regard the worship of idols as a curi- 
ous folly of the past ; but it was radical, extraordi- 
nary, revolutionary in the time when the law was 
first proclaimed, " Thou shalt not make unto thee 
any graven image." The third element in the 
message of Israel was its declaration that God is a 
righteous God. The diiference between the God 
of Judaism and the gods of the surrounding pagan- 
ism was not a difference of names ; it was not that 
one God was called Jehovah and the other god was 
called Baal. It was this : that the other religions 
of the world worshiped force because of fear, and 
this one religion worshiped righteousness because 
of conscience. Hence throughout the Old Testa- 
ment history, until the very latest literature, there 
is scarcely a hint either of punishment or of reward 
in the life to come, scarcely so much suggestion of 
immortality as is to be found in the Egyptian the- 
ology, because it was the message of Israel that 
God is not to be worshiped for wages here or 
hereafter, nor to escape punishment in this life or 
the next ; that he is a righteous God, and because 



382 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

he is righteous Israel owes him reverence. The 
fourth element in this message was that this right- 
eous God demands righteousness of his children. 
Even now Christendom has scarcely learned this 
lesson ; when Hebrew prophets first proclaimed it 
the world was very slow to receive it. The object 
of pagan religion is rarely, I think never, to make 
men better ; it is to show men how they can escape 
the wrath of the gods or how they can win the 
favor of the gods. But in Israel's law, with the 
commands " Thou shalt have no other gods before 
me," and " Thou shalt not make unto thee any 
graven image " are combined the great ethical 
principles which are the foundation of social order 
— respect for parents, regard for the rights of per- 
son, for the purity of the family, for property, for 
reputation. The religion of Israel is built on a 
religio-ethical basis ; it is the message of Israel 
that righteousness is the foundation of religion and 
that religion is impossible dissociated from moral- 
ity. And then, next in this message is an element 
still more radical : that this righteous God, who 
demands righteousness of his children, demands no- 
thing else. Sacrifices, temple services, public and 
private worship. Sabbath observances, are regarded 
simply as the means by which we are equipped by 
God for practical righteousness, or by which we 
express our reverence for our God. The whole 
ceremonial system of Judaism, therefore, is a vol- 
untary system ; every sacrifice is the expression of 
an experience, — of gratitude, of consecration, of 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 383 

penitence, of communion. This is the answer 
which Israel in the Old Testament makes to the 
question, Who is God ? He is a person, a spiritual 
person, a righteous person, demanding righteous- 
ness of his children and demanding nothing else. 

To the second question, What is man ? the answer 
of Israel is equally explicit. " God made man in 
his own image : " into man God breathed his own 
spirit : ^ this is the fundamental faith of Israel in 
man, and it colors all Israel's religious experience. 
And this, too, was radical ; for when the Hebrew 
nation began to learn, and as it learned to impart, 
its message, the image of God was looked for in the 
clouds, in the thunder, in the lightning, in the sea, 
in the land, in the mountains, in the beasts — 
everywhere but in men. The message of Israel 
transferred man's search for God from the outer 
world of force to the inner world of thought and 
feeling. " The word," that is, the speech or revela- 
tion of God, said one of the ancient prophets, " is 
very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy 
heart, that thou mayest do it." ^ The portraitures 
of God in the Old Testament are based on this 
assumption : he is a Man of War, a Shepherd, a 
Husband, a Father. ^ The Old Testament is often 
criticised for its anthropomorphic representations 
of God. Its anthropomorphism is its glory. For 

1 Gen. i. 27 ; ii. 7. 

2 Deut. XXX. 14. Compare Rom. x. 6-9. 

2 Ps. xxiv. 8 ; Exod. xv. 3 ; Ps. xxiii. ; Isa. liv. 5 ; Jer. iii. 14 ; 
Ps. ciii. 13. 



384 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

nothing that God has made is so splendid as man. 
The ocean ? man rides the ocean. The lightning ? 
man catches the lightning. The forest ? man fells 
the forests. It is man with his hand on the rudder 
of the world, with his thoughts reaching out into 
the great universe beyond, with his heart of love, 
daring to do, to suffer, to die — it is man that is 
in the image of God ; even in ruin he is a divine 
ruin. Through man God is to be seen ; and God 
is liker to man than to anything else he has ever 
made : 

" Tliou hast made him but little lower than God, 

And crownest him with glory and honor. 

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands • 

Thou hast put all things under his feet." ^ 

This is the answer of Israel's message to the 
question, What is man ? 

To the third question. What is the relationship 
between God and man, the message of Israel replies : 
" God is the great companion, the loving, yet terri- 
ble friend of his inmost soul, with whom he holds 
communion in the inmost sanctuary of his heart, to 
whom he turns or should turn in any hour of his 
adversity or happiness." ^ To Israel God is not an 
hypothesis to account for the phenomena of crea- 
tion ; not an absentee God who occasionally inter- 
feres with the world on the petition of his children. 

1 Ps. viii. 5, 6. 

2 John Cotter Morison : The Service of Man, page 181. The 
quotation is the m^ore significant because it comes from one who 
is a disbeliever in revelation of any description and an agnostic as 
regards God. 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 385 

This notion of God belongs to Baalism; Elijah 
overwhelms its devotees with his sarcasm : " Cry 
aloud, for he is a god : either he is musing, or he 
has gone aside, or he is on a journey, or peradven- 
ture he sleepeth and must be awaked." ^ Israel 
believes in a living God ; a God who is in his 
world of nature and his world of men — a law- 
giver with Moses, an architect with Bezaleel, a 
soldier with Joshua, a singer with David, a preacher 
with Amos, a statesman with Isaiah : — in all men, 
not merely in these thirty or forty men ; in all time, 
not merely in these twelve or fourteen centuries ; in 
aU the world, not merely in this little province. It 
is not the message of Israel that God was once in 
his world, once gave law to Moses, once inspired 
Joshua with courage, once brooded David with 
song, once visited Isaiah in the temple and Ezekiel 
in the desert ; it is that God is in his world, new 
creating in every spring, ruling over every storm, 
giving his law to all consciences, inspiring all 
heroic souls to valiant deeds, singing in every singer 
of pure and lofty verse, revealing himself to every 
prophet of his righteousness and his love. 

To the fourth question. How can the right rela- 
tionship be brought about between God and men, 
the Hebrew message is not less explicit. It is 
terribly clear in its enunciation that such right 
relationship does not now exist. It declares that 
God is of purer eyes than to see iniquity ; that he 
cannot and will not suffer it ; and that man is 

1 1 Kings xviii. 27. 



386 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF TEE HEBREWS 

iniquitous, deliberately, willfully, continuously, ha- 
bitually so.^ But it also plainly sbows what is 
necessary to deliver man from this sin, to remove 
and destroy this obstacle between the soul and God, 
and to make them truly one in the unity of a mutual 
love. It declares that God can never accept a lower 
standard than that of perfect, divine righteousness, 
but that if man accepts this standard and sincerely 
and earnestly endeavors to make it his own, no 
other condition of comradeship is required ; that 
God desires this comradeship with man, longs for 
it, is eager for it, but that it is possible only as 
man reconciles himself with God by abandoning 
his sin, by accepting God's law and loyally obey- 
ing it, by accepting God's love and loyally respond- 
ing to it. He has simply to seek God, to call upon 
him, to forsake his wicked ways and his unright- 
eous thoughts and return to the Lord, and the 
Lord will have mercy upon him and will abun- 
dantly pardon. His past sins need not prevent ; 
for God will blot them out as a thick cloud is 
blotted out by the sun ; he will cast them into the 
depths of the sea ; though they were as scarlet, 
they shall be white as snow ; though they were red 
as crimson, they shall be as wool.^ No sacrifice is 
necessary to propitiate God, or to turn away his 
wrath or win his favor. Sacrifice is only the human 

1 For a sunimary of the Old Testament indictment of man see 
Paul's quotations gathered from various Old Testament wiitings 
and contained in Romans iii. 10-18. 

2 Isa. xliv. 22 ; Micah vii. 19 ; Isa. i. 18. 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 387 

expression of penitence, consecration, thanksgiving. 
It is only a symbolical witness that to destroy sin 
costs much ; that sin is not a light matter to be 
easily dismissed and readily forgotten. But God, 
though he accepts sacrifice as man's expression 
of loyalty and love, does not require it. He re- 
quires only that the penitent cease to do evil and 
learn to do well, that he begin forthwith to do 
justly, love mercy, and walk humbly in fellowship 
with his God.^ For God is more than a righteous 
God ; he is a pitying God ; he is " great in mercy ; '' 
he is " long-suffering ; " he not only demands right- 
eousness, he helps to righteousness all who wish to 
be righteous ; he not only forgives sin, he destroys 
it, and he leads the forgiven sinner in the paths of 
righteousness.^ 

This is the message of Israel to the world : that 
God is a righteous person, who demands righteous- 
ness of his people and demands nothing else ; that 
man is of kin with God ; that the relationship 
between God and man is one of comradeship ; that 
to enter into that comradeship man must desire it 
and endeavor to conform his life to it ; and that if 
he does so desire and so endeavor he may be assured 
of God's readiness to receive and to help him. But 
Israel does not understand his message at first. In 
the Old Testament we see him gradually learning 
the message which in time he is to give to the 

1 Micah vi. 6-8. 

2 Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7; Num. xiv. 18; 2 Chron. xxx. 9; Ps. xxiii. 3; 
Ixxxv. 2 ; Ixxxvi. 5, 15 ; ciii. 8 ; cxlv. 8, 9. 



388 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

world. First he conceives of Jehovah as one God 
among many gods, but superior to them all, — " no 
other god like unto thee ; " as a provincial God who 
dwells in Jerusalem and rules in Palestine, but not 
in Egypt or in Babylon ; only gradually does Israel 
learn that Jehovah is God alone, and all the gods 
of the heathen are what Jeremiah calls them, — 
" Tio^gods." At first Israel thinks of him as a 
just Judge who cannot endure the wicked, who 
wiU destroy them, and who commissions Israel to 
destroy them. Only very gradually does Israel 
learn that there is a higher justice than that which 
destroys, that mercy is not incongruous with jus- 
tice, that the highest righteousness is not that 
which destroys men, but that which transforms 
them. At first he thinks of God's love as confined 
to Israel ; Israel alone is of kin to God ; the hea- 
then are outcasts, of a different blood, of a differ- 
ent spirit ; not until the captivity does he learn 
that God cares for pagans also, that he will have 
mercy on Nineveh if it repents, that he wiU call 
Cyrus the Persian to be his minister. At first hu- 
manity appears to Israel to be required only toward 
Israelites ; the Jew must not permanently enslave 
a Jew, but may so enslave a pagan ; he must not 
take usury of a Jew, but may of a pagan ; he must 
not eat unclean meats, but may reserve them for 
the stranger in the land ; ^ not until later does he 
learn that he is to do justly toward all men, and 

1 Exod. XX. 1,2; Deut. xv. 12-18 ; Lev. xxv. 45, 46 ; Deut. 
xxiii. 19,20; xiv. 21. 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 389 

exercise mercy for all. At first he conceives of his 
relationship to God as that of a soldier to his com- 
mander-in-chief, or that of a subject to his king ; 
obedience by a dogged resolution to an external 
law is his highest conception of religion ; not until 
later does religion grow to be divine comradeship, 
and obedience the conformity of character to char- 
acter, not of conduct to statute laws. At first he 
imagines that Jehovah must be propitiated by sac- 
rifices ; for a long time the two conceptions, that 
of the pagans that God must be appeased by sacri- 
fices, and that of the prophets that God is himself 
self-sacrificing, struggle for the mastery ; it is not 
until the time of the Great Unknown that the idea 
becomes clear, even to the mind of the most spirit- 
ual, that it is by his own suffering the Servant of 
Jehovah will redeem Israel; that the sacrifice is 
not for God, but for the people ; that God him- 
self takes the burdens, the sorrows, and the sins of 
his people on himself. This is the Old Testament ; 
the literature of an ancient people commissioned 
first to learn, then by the very process of their 
learning to teach the world, that God is a righteous 
person, that man is his child, that the relationship 
between the two is one of comradeship, that to 
enter into this comradeship nothing is necessary 
but to accept God's love and loyally give him our 
love in return. /'^. 

And yet in all his history Israel is seen expec- 
tant of a clearer understanding : he is seen in quest 
of his message ; he is seen with his face toward the 



390 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

future looking for a clearer disclosure of tlie light 
and a larger endowment of the life. The pro- 
phets prophesy in part ; the message is given in 
fragments, — "by divers portions and in divers 
manners," as says one of the New Testament 
interpreters of this message.^ Moses is reported as 
asking to see the glory of God ; Gideon as doubt- 
ing if Jehovah is indeed with his people ; Job as 
questioning if he is a righteous God, and if so why 
life is so full of undeserved and seemingly unjust 
suffering ; the Psalmist as seeking for him as the 
thirsty hart panteth for the water brooks; even 
the Great Unknown as longing for him to rend the 
heavens and come down and manifest himself.^ In 
the earliest traditions of this people their God is 
represented as putting enmity between man and 
the powers of evil ; as warning man that those 
powers will poison humanity, but also as promising 
man that humanity will at last utterly destroy 
them. In the successive calls to Israel to engage 
in this battle of the ages, Israel has the pledge and 
the promise of his Father's help and the assurance 
through his Father's help of final victory. In the 
first revelation of himself to Moses he appears as a 
Deliverer, as one who has seen the burdens of his 
people, has made them his own, and is coming to 
them to set them free.^ From this birthday of 

1 Heb. i. 1, Rev. Ver. 

2 Exod. xxxiii. 18 ; Judg. vi. 13 ; Job ix. 21-24 ; Ps. xlii. 1 ; Isa. 
Ixiv. 1, 2. 

3 "The Mosaic conception of God ... is a conception of God 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 391 

tlie nation it is the constant burden of the prophets 
that is intimated to him that One is coming to 
Israel, — described sometimes as a prophet, some- 
times as a king, sometimes as a shepherd, sometimes 
as a princely priest, sometimes as a suffering ser- 
vant of the Lord, — who will as a prophet interpret 
God to them, as a king show them the full mean- 
ing of the divine law, as a priest bring them back 
to the God they have forsaken, as a shepherd enfold 
and feed and protect them, and as a suffering ser- 
vant of the Lord bear the burdens of their sins 
with them and for them.^ Those who accept his 
message, are loyal to his law, and share both his 
burdens and their own with him, he will lead to 
victory. And when that victory is won, the evils 
which sin has brought into the world will disappear 
from the world : wars will cease ; pestilence and 
disease will abate ; death itself will be conquered ; 
love and life will reign. ^ 

the DeUverer." Ancient Ideals, by H. 0. Taylor, vol. ii. 102. " The 
fundamental thought (of Mosaism) should rather be said to centre 
exclusiyely in the knowledge of the true Deliverer. ... In this 
sense that ancient Mosaic age includes within it the Messianic, that 
is, the Christian, not as comprehended by distinct consciousness or 
direct effort, but as realized through the inherent germinating 
force of the fundamental idea, which here arose, and in its own 
time necessarily led to it." History of Israel, by Heinrich Ewald, 
vol. ii, pp. 109, 113. The whole section (ii.) on the Develop- 
ment and Maturity of the Theocracy under Moses and Joshua is 
of the highest interpretative value. 

1 Deut. xviii. 15 ; Ps. Ixxii, ; ex. 4 ; Ezek. xxxiv. 23 ; Zeeh. vi. 
12 ; Isa. liii. 

2 Isa. ii. 1-4 ix. 1-7 ; xi. 1-9 ; Ix. ; Ixi. ; Hos. xiii. 14 ; Zeeh. 
xiv. 11. 



392 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Two or three centuries passed away after the 
last contribution of any note had been made to 
the unique literature of this Hebrew people. Dur- 
ing those two or three centuries no new lawgiver 
interpreted the divine law, no new poet sang of the 
divine love, no new prophet spoke of man's duty or 
God's grace. Then a new prophet appeared in 
Palestine. His life was brief and uneventful ; his 
message was a continuation of the message of 
Israel, but to it he gave a new significance. He 
taught that God is righteous and demands right- 
eousness of his children, and demands nothing else ; 
but to righteousness he gave a clearer meaning, if 
not a new interpretation. He taught that God is a 
Father who cares for men, cares for the little chil- 
dren, cares even for the insignificant sparrows. He 
taught that righteousness in man must be more 
than obedience to a righteous law; it must be 
spontaneous ; must spring from the heart ; must 
include reverence in spirit, chastity in thought, 
meekness and lowliness of mind, the peace-loving 
and peace-making disposition, the nature which 
loves and prays for one's enemies. He taught that 
God will help men to this spirit if they desire it, 
that he is more ready to give his own spirit of love 
to those that ask for it than fathers are to give 
bread to their children when they are hungry, that 
the spirit of righteousness, that is, of love, can be 
had by any who seek for it. He told his race that 
the kingdom of heaven, long promised and long 
expected, was not afar off, that it was close at 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 393 

hand ; it was no other than the spirit of obedience 
and fidelity, of loyalty and love to God, and service 
of men, and that it could only grow gradually and 
despite much opposition. His teaching was illus- 
trated by his life. He seemed utterly careless of 
the things for which men generally are most eager, 
— wealth, fame, social position, power. He lived 
wholly for others. The contradictions of his char- 
acter constitute an enigma which the world has 
never been weary of studying : his fearlessness in 
defending others, and his meekness when assailed 
himself ; his quiet assumption of authority over his 
followers, and his absolute self-abnegation ; his pu- 
rity of life, and his understanding of and sympathy 
with every form of sin; his unassailable dignity 
and his approachableness ; his disregard of the con- 
ventions and ceremonies of religion, and his trans- 
parent devoutness of spirit; his humility and his 
challenge to his enemies to search the record of his 
life for a flaw ; his reverence and the familiarity of 
his intercourse with God; his joyousness and his 
participation in the sins and sorrows of the world.^ 
The leaders of his time arrayed themselves against 
him as an iconoclast ; the people regarded him with 
admiration as a prophet ; his immediate followers 
believed that he was the One of whom the ancient 
prophets had spoken as he that was to come and 
bring with him a new and divine life to the world. 

^ See, for an admirable presentation of this contrariety of 
character in Christ, chapter x. in Nature and the Supernatural, 
by Horace Bushnell. 



394 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

After his death they recalled and recorded his first 
sermon, in which he had declared that he had come 
to fulfill those ancient prophecies ; his private con- 
versations with them, in which he had indicated still 
more clearly this as his mission; the trial scene 
before the Jewish Sanhedrim, in which, put upon 
the stand and under oath, he had affirmed that he 
was the expected Messiah; the trial scene before 
the Koman procurator, in which he had affirmed 
that he was a king, and had come to establish a 
kingdom on the earth, not by force of arms, but 
by force of truth. His death disheartened and 
scattered his followers ; but their faith in his resur- 
rection gave them new courage and a new under- 
standing of him and his mission. Since that time, 
and apparently due to his influence, a new life has 
appeared in the world. He contributed nothing to 
architecture, yet there are no such noble monu- 
ments as those built to his memory ; nothing to 
song, yet his inspiration has created a new order 
of music ; nothing to art, yet his spirit has per- 
meated most of modern art ; nothing to literature, 
yet no one teacher has created so profound an influ- 
ence on literature as he has exerted; he promul- 
gated no laws and instituted no reforms, yet where 
the story of his life and death has gone, slavery has 
been abolished, government has grown more just, 
war has been ameliorated, education has become 
general, and in some communities practically uni- 
versal, and the home has been recreated ; he taught 
no creed, formulated no ritual, and organized no 



THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL 395 

church, but his influence on religious philosophy 
has far transcended that of the greatest of an- 
cient philosophers, and his name is mingled with 
that of his Father in the prayers and praises of the 
great liturgies of Christendom, and scores of eccle- 
siastical organizations claim the authority of his 
name. More than all, his influence has almost 
created the virtues of meekness, gentleness, and 
forbearance, and taught the world how to unite 
them with those of sturdiness, courage, and energy. 
If he is not the prophet whom Moses foretold, he 
has done more than all other prophets to interpret 
the divine nature to man ; if he is not the king 
whom the unknown author of the Seventy-second 
Psalm anticipated, his spirit has done more than 
that of all other lawgivers combined to imbue law 
with a new and humane spirit; if he is not the 
shepherd whom Ezekiel foresaw, he has done more 
than all other shepherds to protect and enrich the 
life of man ; if he is not the princely priest whom 
Zechariah saw, he has done more than all other 
priests to bring humanity back to God ; if he is not 
the suffering servant of whom the Great Unknown 
had a mystical vision, his life and death have given 
to suffering a new and glorious significance. 

This is not the place to answer the questions here 
barely suggested. Yet I cannot close this volume 
in the life and literature of the ancient Hebrews 
without saying that I do not see how any one 
can accept the general interpretation of that life 
and literature here given, and not see in Jesus of 



396 LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE HEBREWS 

Nazareth the fulfillment of Israel's aspirations ; 
not see, at least, that he more than any other of 
the sons of men, more, I will say, than all the other 
sons of men, gives answer to the four great ques- 
tions of religion: his god-like character answers the 
question. Who is God ; his simple, spontaneous, 
earnest and radiant life answers the question, What 
should man be ; his unity with the Father inter- 
prets that ideal comradeship between the spirit of 
man and the spirit of God which should be the goal 
of all life ; his passion tells us what we who possess 
any measure of that comradeship are to do that we 
may impart the divine life to others. 



INDEX 



INDEX OF SCEIPTURE REFERENCES 



Citations are usually to be found in the footnotes beginning on the pages 
here referred to. A reference occurring twice in the note is thus indicated : 
(2 ref.); three times, (3 ref.)- 



Genesis. 

PAGE 

i.27 383 

1.28, 29 357 

ii. 7 383 

iii. 15 357 

vi. 20 7 

vii. 2, 3, 9 7 

ix. 8-17 357 

xii. 1-3 357 

xii. 1-7 357 

xiii. 14-17 357 

xxii. 8 162 

xxiv 169 

xxviii. 16 138 

Exodus. 

iii. 7,8 357 

xii 98 

xiii. 14,15 125 

XV. 3 383 

xviii. (19-26) 120 

xix. 5 344 

xix. 5, 6 357 

XX. 1,2 388 

XX. 1-17 102 

XX 102 

XX. 1-xxiv. 7 17 

xx-xxiv. 7 36 

XX. 23-25 138 

XX. 24 160 

XX. 24r-26 129 

xxii. 1-14 125 

xxii. 5, 6, 7 107 

xxii. 21 124 

xxii. 21,22 126 

xxii. 29, 30 129 

xxiii. 14-19 129 

xxxiii. 18 390 

xxxiv. 6,7 387 

Leviticus. 

i.3 154 

vi. 2-7 158 



xvi 159 

xvii. 4, 8, 9 160 

xvii. 4, 8, 9, 11 145 

xvii. 11 159 

xix. 10, 15 126 

xix. 15 124 

xxiv. 22 124 

xxiv. 22 126 

XXV. 45,46 388 

xxvii, 30-32 153 

Numbers. 

ix. 5 98 

xi. 16, 17 124 

xiv. 1-5,10 124 

xiv. 18 387 

xxi. 14 36 

XXV. 12, 13 358 

xxvii. 18-23 124 

XXXV. 19 252 

Deuteronomy. 

i. 9-14 124 

i. 17 124 

i. 17 126 

V 102 

V. 6-11 108 

vi. 4 380 

vi.7 125 

X.19 126 

xii-xxvi 36 

xii. 6, 11, 14, 26 145 

xii. 12, 18f. (2 ref.).. 126 

xiii. 1-5 830 

xiv.21 388 

xiv. 22-28 153 

xiv. 27 126 

xiv. 27,29 126 

xiv. 28f 136 

xiv. 29 126 

XV. 7-11 126 

XV. 12-18 388 

XV. 13-15 126 

xvi. 11, 14 (3 ref.) ...126 



xvi. 19 124 

xvi. 19 126 

xvii. 14-20 124 

xvii. 18 122 

xviii. 15 391 

xviii. 15-19 358 

xviii. 21,22 126 

xxi. 1-9 125 

xxii. 1-A 126 

xxii. 8 125 

xxiii. 19, 20 126 

xxiii. 19,20 388 

xxiv. 6, 12f 126 

xxiv. 7 125 

xxiv. 7 126 

xxiv. 14f 126 

xxiv. 14.15 126 

xxiv. 16 125 

xxiv. 17,19,20,21 ..126 

xxiv. 19-22 179 

XXV. 7-9 181 

xxvi. 11 (2 ref.) 126 

xxvi. 11, 12f 126 

xxvi. 12f 126 

xxvu. 19 126 

XXX. 14 383 

XXX. 15,16 343 

xxxi. 9-13 125 

xxxiii. 10 125 

Joshua. 

i. 1-9 357 

V. 10,11 98 

viii. 2 8 

ix. 18-21 124 

X. 12, 13 7 

X. 13 36 

X.13 37 

X.40 8 

xxiv. 15-21 344 

Judges. 

ii. 11 143 

v 36 



400 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 



vi.l3 390 

vi.24 142 

ix. 8-15 171 

XV. 4 50 

XV.16 174 

Ruth. 

i. 16 179 

iii.9-13 252 

iv.1-8 252 

iv.22 177 

1 Samuel. 

X.5 346 

X.25 36 

XV. 21 142 

xvi.5 142 

XX. 6 142 

2 Samuel. 

i. 17-27 36 

i.l8 36 

i.l8 37 

vii 33 

vii. 11-16 357 

xii. 1-7 126 

xviii. 1,2 48 

xxiv. 1 7 

1 Kings. 

iv.32, 33 ...36 

xi. 41 36 

xii. 28, 29 143 

xvi. 31, 32 143 

xvii.4,6 50 

xviii. 27 385 

xviii. 29-38 142 

XX 49 

xxi. 1-16 125 

xxi. 17-24 126 

2 Kings. 

vi.1-7 50 

xvii 118 

xxi. 1-16 119 

xxiu. 4 119 

xxiii. 13 143 

xxiu. 21-23 98 

xxiv. 4 119 

1 Chronicles. 

xiii. 1-8 124 

xviii 287 

xxi. 1 7 

xxi. 29 98 

xxii. 13 98 

xxiii. 14,15 98 

xxvii. 24 36 

xxvii. 25, 34 48 

xxix. 29 36 

2 Chronicles. 

vii. 12 145 

xi. 29 36 



xii. 15 36 

xvii. 8, 9 125 

XX. 34 36 

xxiii. 1-10 119 

xxvi. 18-21 145 

XXX. 1 98 

XXX.9 387 

XXX. 22 125 

xxxiii. 19 36 

xxiv. 6, 9 98 

xxxiv. 14 98 

XXXV. 1-19 98 

XXXV. 2, 3 125 

Ezra. 

iv 38 

iv. 6 183 

V 38 

vi 38 

vi. 19, 20 98 

ix. 11,12 178 

X. 10-17 178 

Nehemiah. 

viii. 5-8 125 

ix. 9-23 98 

xiii. 23-27 178 

Esther. 

iH. 8-11 192 

iv. 14, 16 187 

V. 6-8 192 

vi. 3,7-10 192 

vii. 3-6 192 

Job. 

ii.9 242 

iii. 20-23 244 

iv. 7-9 245 

vi. 2-4 248 

vi. 28-30 249 

vii. 9 245 

vii. 20 253 

viii. 3-7 245 

ix.2,3 249 

ix. 15-24 255 

ix. 21-24 390 

ix. 28-31 249 

ix. 32, 33 254 

x.3-7 250 

xiii. 7,8 247 

xiv. 7-14 252 

xix. 25-27 252 

xxi. 7-15 250 

xxi. 17-20 250 

xxii. 5-11 247 

xxiii. 3-9 255 

xxiii. 8, 9, 10 252 

xxvii. 8-23 256 

xxviii 256 

xxviii. 1-28 257 

xxbc. 2-17 239 

xxxi. 35-37 254 

xxxii.-xxxvii 256 



xxxviii. 3, 4, 18, 22, 24,258 

xl. 8 258 

xliii. 7 259 

Psalms. 

i 272 

iii 305 

iii. 5 323 

iv 305 

vii 305 

viii 305 

viii. 5,6 384 

xi 305 

xi. 4 317 

xiv. 1 323 

XV 305 

xvi.8 323 

xviii 305 

xviii. 7-17 319 

xviu. 28-35 324 

xviii. 35 324 

xix. 1-6 305 

xxii. 9 323 

xxiii 323 

xxiii 383 

xxiii. 3 387 

xxiii. 3, 5 324 

xxiv 305 

xxiv 3i0 

xxiv.8 383 

XXV. 8 323 

XXV. 11. 325 

xxvii. 11 323 

xxix 305 

xxix. 9 319 

xxxi. 3 323 

xxxii 305 

xxxiii. 6-8 60 

xiii. 1 390 

xiii 309 

xiv 321 

xlvi.l 323 

xlviii 309 

H. 1, 2 323 

li.11,17 325 

li.l6 152 

Ivii. 1 323 

lis 314 

Ixix 314 

Ixxii 321 

Ixxii 357 

Ixxii 391 

Ixxii. 12-17 326 

Ixxvi 322 

Ixxvii. 7-11 314 

Ixxviii 322 

lxxix.9 325 

Ixxxi. 1-3 320 

Ixxxv. 2 387 

lxxxvi.5 324 

Ixxxvi. 5,15 387 

Ixxxviii. 5-8 (2 ref.)..198 

xci 309 

xci.4 326 



INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 401 



xcv 320 

xcv.1,2 320 

xcvi 319 

xcvi 320 

xcviii. 4r^ 320 

c. 1 320 

ci 305 

ciii. 1-5 324 

ciii. 7 98 

ciii. 8 387 

ciii. 13 326 

ciii. 13 383 

civ 319 

cv 98 

cv 322 

cv. 26 98 

cvi(2ref.) 98 

cvi 322 

cix 314 

CX.4 391 

cxiv 322 

cxviii 322 

cxxii 322 

cxxv 322 

cxxvi 322 

cxxxv 98 

cxxxv 322 

cxxxvi 98 

cxxxvi 309 

cxxxvi 322 

cxxxvii 314 

cxxxvii. 8, 9 8 

cxxxvii, 9 177 

cxxxix 318 

cxxxix. 15, 16 323 

cxxxix. 21, 22 314 

cxlv.8,9 357 

cxlviii. 7-13 321 

cxlix. 3 320 

cl.3^ 320 

Proverbs. 

i.1-6 270 

i. 22-28 274 

iv. 10-19 273 

vii. 14 271 

viii. 24-30 60 

xv.S 271 

XV. 13, 15 276 

xvii.l 271 

xvii.22 276 

xxi.3,27 271 

xxui. 24-35 278 

xxiv. 30-34 279 

XXV. 6,7 285 

XXV. 19 276 

XXV. 21, 22 285 

xxvi. 17 277 

xxvii. 15,16 277 

XX vii. 23-27 278 

XXX. 21-23 278 

XXX. 24-28 278 

xxxl. 10-31 278 



Ecclesiastes. 

i. 1 288 

ii. 1-11 295 

ii.22,23 295 

iii. 19 296 

iv. 9-12 297 

vii. 16, 17 297 

xi. 9-xii. 7 300 

xii. 13, 14 300 

Song of Songs. 

i. 1 201 

i.2-8 212 

i. 4 201 

i.7 201 

i.9 201 

i. 15 218 

i. 9-ii. 7 213 

ii.7 211 

ii. 8-17 215 

ii. 16, 17 218 

iii. 1-5 216 

iii. 6-11 208 

iii. &-11 217 

iv. 1-7 218 

iv. 4 209 

iv. 8-v. 1 208 

iv. 8-v. 1 219 

V. 15 209 

V. 2-vi. 3 221 

vi. 4-10 223 

vi. 11,12 201 

vi. 11-vii. 9 224 

vi.l3 206 

vii. 10-viii. 7 224 

viu. 7 211 

viii. 5, 6, 7 201 

Isaiah. 

i. 10 338 

i. 10-17 146 

i. 11-15 152 

i. 16-18 345 

i. 18 386 

ii.l^ 391 

ii.2-4 358 

iii. 15 345 

V. 8-20 345 

vi 339 

vii. 10-17 336 

vii. 10-17 357 

viii. 20 344 

ix. 1-7 391 

ix. 2-7 357 

xi. 1-9 391 

xi. 6-9 358 

xl. 1-8 366 

xl.-lxvi 361 

xl. 25, 26 144 

xlii. 1^ 368 

xliv. 1,2, 21 368 

xliv. 22 344 

xUv. 22 386 

xliv. 28 364 



xlv.l 364 

xlix. 5-10 368 

Iii. 13-15 368 

liii 358 

liii 370 

liu 391 

liv 359 

Uv. 5 383 

Iv. 6-9 275 

Ix 359 

Ix 391 

Lxi 391 

Ixiii. 11, 12 98 

Ixiv. 1,2 390 

lxv.3 119 

Jeremiah. 

i. 4^10 339 

ii.ll 144 

iii. 11 118 

iii. 14 383 

iii. 16 358 

iii. 22 344 

JY_ \ 3^ 

vii. 17, 18,' 31 ".'.*'.!.'.*. 119 

vii. 21-23 147 

vui. 2 119 

viii. 7, 9 46 

xiv. 13 119 

xvi. 20 144 

xviii. 11 344 

xxvi. 10-16 124 

xxxi. 1-9, 31-34 358 

xxxiii. 18 147 

xxxviii 126 

xUv.23 344 

Ezekiel. 

i 144 

i 339 

ii 339 

xi. 17-20 358 

xviii. 23 344 

xxxiv. 23 391 

xl.-xlviii 358 

Daniel. 

iv. 27 355 

ix.l 183 

Rosea. 

iv. 6 344 

xi.l 334 

xiii. 14 391 

xiv. 4-8 363 

Amos. 

ii.4 344 

ii. 6-8 345 

iii. 8 338 

v.21,22 152 

V. 21-24 147 

V.25 147 



.^ 



402 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 



Obadiah. 
1-21 359 

Jonah. 

i.l7 198 

ii. 1-9 198 

iv. 2 199 

iv. 9-11 200 

3Iicah. 

ii. 12 345 

iiL9-12 345 

vi. 6-8 152 

vi. 6-8 387 

vli.l9 386 

Nahum. 

iii.l 348 

Habakkuk. 

i.2 348 

ill. 17 348 

Zephaniah. 

i.5 119 

Haggai. 
i 145 

Zechariah. 

i. l-4,7ff 339 

vi. 12 391 

xiv.ll 391 

Malachi. 

iii.7 344 

Matthew. 

i.5 177 

ii. 15 335 

v.23,24 158 

V.25 267 



v.34,35 276 

V. 43-18 286 

V. 44, 45 267 

viii. 4 54 

xii. 39,40,41 194 

xix.7, 8 54 

xxi. 42 1 

xxii. 29 1 

xxiii. 17 24 

xxvi. 17,19 98 

xxvi. 54 1 

Mark. 

i.44(2ref.) 54 

vii. 13 24 

X.3 54 

X. 5 54 

xii. 10 1 

xii. 19 (2 ref.) 54 

xii. 26 (3 ref.) 54 

XV. 28 1 

lAike. 

i. 1-4 28 

V. 14 54 

xi. 29, 30, 31 194 

xiv. 8-10 285 

xvi.29,31 54 

xx.37t 54 

xxiv. 27 1 

xxiv. 27 54 

xxiv. 44 54 

John. 

i. 17 54 

V.39 1 

V.46, 47 54 

vii. 19 54 

vii. 38 1 

viii. 5 54 

X. 35 1 

xvi.33 261 



Acts. 

vii 93 

viii. 32 1 

XV. 21 (2 ref.) 54 

xxviii. 23 54 

RoTimns. 

i.2 1 

iii. 10-18 386 

iv. 3 1 

viii. 38, 39 261 

X.5 54 

X. 6-9 383 

X. 19 54 

xii. 20 285 

XV.4 1 

1 Corinthians. 

xiii. 9, 12 14 

xiii. 12, 13 258 

2 Corinthians. 

iu.l5 24 

iii. 15 (2 ref.) 54 

Galatians. 
iv.30 1 

Colossians. 
ii.21 3 

1 Timothy. 
V.18 1 

2 Timothy. 

iii. 16,17 26 

Hebrews. 

i.l 390 

ix.22 145 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Included in this index are the names of books and authors cited. 



Abbott, T. K., International Critical 

Commentary, 3 n. 
Adversary, in Job, not a demon of 

malice, 240. 
Agnosticism, and the Book of Job, 

260. 
Ahab, 49. 

Ahasuerus. See Xerxes. 
Ahijah the Shilonite, Book of, 36. 
Alf ord, Greek Testament, 3 n. 
Amos, 347, 350, 367. 
Anthropomorphism, 317, 383, of. 352. 
Apocrypha, 26 n. 
Arnold, Matthew, Dover Beach, 

quoted, 262. 
Atonement, Day of, 159. 
Austin, John, quoted, 107. 

Bacon, B. "W., Genesis of Genesis,53n., 
66 n. Triple Tradition of Ezodzis, 
53 n. 

BakeweWs Geology, 61 n. 

Banks, E. J., Jonah in Fact and 
Fancy, 192 n. 

Baring-Gould, S., Legends of the Par 
triarchs and Prophets, 92 n. 

Bartlett, E. T., Scriptures Hebrew 
and Christian, 38 n. 

Bartlett, S. C, Veracity of the Hexa- 
teuch, 53 n. 

Beecher, W. J., in Bible as Literature, 
quoted, 276. 

Behrends, A. J. F., Old Testament 
Under Fire, 22 n. See also, 53 n. 

Belief, primitive religious, 237. 

Bible, significance of the term, 1 ; 
older attitude toward, 2 ff., 372, 
379 ; inconsistencies in, 7 ff . ; new 
view of, 8 If., 374, 380.; Higher and 
Lower Criticism of, 9 ff . ; God and, 
11 ; human and divme in, 13 ; mate- 
rials used by writers of, 18; traditions 
concerning vn^itings of, 21 ; Christ 
and traditions concerning, 24 ; his- 
tory in, 29flf., 42ff. ; documents in, 
34 ff., 66 ff., lost books referred to 
in, 36 ; folk-lore in, 38, 171, 378 if. ; 
epic in, 60, 231 ; myth in, 63, 76, 



378 ff. ; legend in, 74, 378 ff . ; laws 
in, 81 fE., 378 ff. ; ritual and sacri- 
fices in, 129 ff. ; fiction in, 164 ff. ; 
parables in, 170 ff. ; idyl in, 177 ; 
historical romance in, 183 ff.; satiri- 
cal romance in, 192 ff. ; drama in, 
206, 378 ff. ; symbolism in, 208 ff. ; 
Wisdom Literature of, 230, 263 ff . ; 
proverbs m, 263 ff., 378 ff.; poetry 
(lyrics) in, 305 ff., 378 ff.; orations 
in, 378 ff. ; old and new views of, 
contrasted, 372, 379, cf. iv. 2, 8, 11 ; 
omissions in, 375. 

Bible, literary study of, methods of, 
16 ; results of, 17 ff . ; objection to, 
21. 

Bible, message of, 372 ff. ; concerning 
God, 380 ff . ; concerning man, 383 ff . ; 
concerning relationship of God and 
man, 384 ff. ; and Christ, 392. 

Bible Commentary, 7n., 34 n., 37 n., 
147n.,183n.,201n. 

Books, lost, referred to in Old Testa- 
ment, 36. 

Briggs, C. A., Higher Criticism of the 
Hexateuch, quoted, 130 n. ; Mes- 
sianic Prophecy, 359 n. ; Study of 
the Holy Scripture, quoted, 10 n., 
102 n. 

Browning, R., Clive, quoted, 204. 

Bruce, A. B., Apologetics, 102 n.. 
129 n. 

Buckle, History of Civilization, 43. 

Budde, K., Religion of Israel, 49 n. ; 
quoted, 102 n. 

Bushnell, H., Nature and the Super- 
natural, 393 n. 

Byron, Childe Harold, quoted, 295. 

Calvin, Commentary, quoted, 266 n. ; 

Institutes, quoted, 90 n. 
Cambridge Bible, quoted, 3 n., 7n., 

33 n. 
Captivity, date of. 30. 
Cavemo, C, ^ Narrow Ax in Biblical 

Criticism, 192 n. 
Century Dictionary, quoted, 10, 205, 

206, 229. 



404 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Cheyne, T. K., on authorahip of 
Psalms, 305. 

Christ, and traditions concerning the 
Bible, 24 : and the authorship of 
the Pentateuch, 54 n, : attitude to- 
ward sacrifice, 158 ; and the story 
of Jonah, 194 ; combines teaching of 
empiricist, legalisx, and prophet, 
266 ; his counsel compared with 
Proverbs, 2^S4; his teaching con- 
trasted with imprecatory psalms, 
315 : relation of his teaching to the 
Book of Psalms, 325 flf. ; relation to 
the prophecy of the Great Unknown, 
370 ; and the message of Israel, 
392 ff . : and the prophets, 395. See 
also, Jesus. 

Chronicles, Book of. 32. 

Code, Hebrew, growth of, 129 ff. ; le- 
galistic, 268. See also, Laic, Levit- 
icai Code, and L,eviiical System. 

Commonwealth, Hebrew, departments 
in, 123 ; free speech in, 125. 

Conant, T. J., Book of Genesis., quoted, 
60 n. 

Cook, F. C, Bible Commentary, 34 n. 

Comill, C.B..,The Rise of the People 
of Israel, quoted, 40. See also, 
49 n. 

Covenant, Book of the, oldest book in 
the Bible, 17, 102 and n. ; included 
in Exodus, 36, 102 ; character and 
contents of, 103 ft. ; simplicity of, 
105 ; primitiTe religion in, 137 S. 

Covenant, larger Book of the, in Deu- 
teronomy. So. 

Cox, S., Ecclesiastes, 17 n., 287 n. 

Crane, F., Religion of To-m,orrow, 
12 n. 

Creation, account of, in Genesis, 59 fE. 

Crime, treatment by Hebrews of, 125. 

Criticism, Higher, meaning of, 9 fE. 

Cyclopedia Biilica, 120 n. 



and date of, 119 fE. ; character of, 
121 fE. 

Development. See Growth. 

Divine Armory, 4 and n. 

Documents in Old Testament, 34 fE. ; 
in Pentateuch, 66 If., 70 fif. 

Drama in the Bible. 206, 379 ; not di- 
dactic, 210 : philosophical, 231. 

Driver, S. R., on Deuteronomy, 120 n., 
126 n., 129 n.: Introduction to the 
Literature of the Old Testament, 
53 n.. 102 n.. 17Sn. : quoted, 201 n. ; 
quoted, 208 n. ; quoted, 234 m, 
287 n. ; on authorship of psalms, 305. 

Ecclesiastes, empirical, 268, various 
rnterpretarions of, 287 n. : character 
of 287 Q. ; authorship of, 288 ; a 
dramatic monologue, 291 : teachings 
of. for the present day, 301 fE. 

Edersheim, Life arid Times of Jesus, 
24 n. 

Egypt in time of iloses, 94 fi. 

Ehot. George, Silas Jlarner, quoted, 
I -236. 

; Elohist narrative. 35. 
[ Emerson. R. W., Essays, quoted, 204. 
I Empiricist, 263. 

Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 a., 53 n., 
90 n., 108n., 178n. 

Epic in the Bible, 231. See also, Sii- 
tory. 

Esther, Story of, 183 fE. 

Evolution. See Growth. 

Ewald, History of Israel, quoted, 
92 n. , 102 n. , and" 390 n. Prophets of 
the Old TestamerU, quoted, 192 n., 
and 337 : on the authorship of 
psalms, 305. 

Exodus, date of the, 27 ; witness to, 
98 fE. 

Expositor's Bible, 17 n. 

EzeMel, 349, 350. 



Daland, W. C, Song of Songs, 201 n. 

Daniel, 350. 

Darius, letter to, and edict of, 37. 

David, date of, 29 ; regarding his au- 
thorship of psalms, 305 fE. 

David, Chronicles of, 36. 

Decalogue, Mosaic authorship of, 
102 n. ; original form of, 106. 

Declaration of Independence, quoted, 
108. 

Delitzsch, on Genesis, 25 n. ; quoted, 
54 n. 

Deluge, account of, in Genesis. 66 ff. ; 
two accounts of, 66 and 63 ; Assyrian : 
story of. 72. i 

De Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer- 
ica, 109 n. 

Deuteronomic Code. See Code ; and 
Law. 

Deuteronomy, date of, 83 ; authorship { 



Faber, F. W., quoted, 265. 

Fact, truth and, 41. 

FaU of man. 61 fE., 136. 353, 355. 

Farrar, F. W.. The Bible and its Su- 
premacy. 38 n.. quoted, 164 n. 

Fiction, in the Bible. 164 fE. ; nature 
of, 165 : prejudice against, 166 ; pur- 
poses of, 167. 

Fisher. G. P. , quoted. 123 ru 

Fitzgerald, E.. quoted, 296. 

Flood. See Deluge. 

Folk-lore in the Bible, 38, 171 fE., 378. 

Free speech in Hebrew Common- 
wealth, 125. 

Froude, J. A., Life of Erasmus, 43 ; 
Sfiort Studies in Great Subject*, 
quoted, 232, 256 n. 

Genesis, Book of, 53 fE. ; authorship 
of, 54 S. ; narratiyes in, 59 fE. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



405 



Genung, J. F., Epic of the Inner Life, 
17 n. ; quoted, 229, 239 n. ; quoted, 
252 n. and 256 n. 

Ginsburg, C. D., on Proverbs, 287 n. 

Gladden, W., Seven Puzzling Boohs, 
quoted, 231 n. 

God, and the Bible, 11 ff. ; transcen- 
dence and immanence of, 11, 12 ; in 
Hebrew history, 47 ; conception of, 
in Psalms, 316 ; in the prophets, 350 ; 
recognizing obligation, 352 ; message 
of Israel concerning, 380 ff. ; mes- 
sage of Israel concerning relation- 
ship of man to, 384 ff . See also, An- 
thropom orphism. 

Goodspeed, G. S., IsraeVs Messianic 
Mope, 359 n. 

" Great Unknown," 349, 351, 364, 368. 

Green, W. H., in Anti-Higher Criti- 
cism, 70 n. ; Higher Criticism of the 
Pentateuch, 53 n. ; quoted, 54 n. ; 
Unity of the Book of Genesis, 54 n. 

Griflas, W. E., lAly Among Thorns, 
17 ; 201 n. ; 218 n. 

Growth, process of national and eccle- 
siastical, 87 ff. ; of Hebrew Code, 
129 ff. 

Guyon, Mme., Song of Songs, quoted, 
201 n. 

Habakkuk, 348, 350. 

Haggai, 349, 351. 

Haley, J. W., Alleged Discrepancies of 
the Bible, 8 n. ; Book of Esther, 
quoted, 191 n. 

HaUam, Constitutional History, 153 n. 

Happiness, significance of, 237 ff . 

Harper, H. A., Bible and Modem Dis- 
coveries, quoted, 99 n. 

Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 49 n. 

Hebrew people, message of, 374 ff. ; 
Christ and message of, 392 ; con- 
trasted with pagan nations, 381. See 
also, Bible. 

Henderson, E., Minor Prophets, 192 n. 

Henley, W. E., Life and Death, 
quoted, 261. 

Herodotus, 44 ; quoted, 104. 

Hexateuch, authorship of, 54 n. 

Hilprecht, H. V., Recent Research in 
Bible Lands, 99 n. 

Historian, frankness of Hebrew, 47 ; 
method of Oriental, 28. 

History, three classes of, 42 ff. ; and 
legend, 78. 

History, Hebrew, beginnings of, 27 ; 
the two narratives of, 29 ff . ; date of 
the editing of books of, 39 ; charac- 
terized, 45 ; principles of, 52 ; out- 
lines of, 116 ff. 

Homer, historicity of the Iliad of, 44. 

Hooker, quoted. 111. 

- I, 347, 350, 359, 367. 



Houghton, Mrs. L. S., Studies in the 
Old Testament, 171 n. 

Humanity of Hebrew laws, 125. 

Huxley, T. H., Science and Hebrew 
Tradition, 61 n. ; Science and Edu- 
cation Essays, quoted, 302. 

Iddo, Vision of, 36. 

Idyl, in the Bible, 177. 

Imagination, language of, as compared 
with symbolism, 208. See also, Fic- 
tion. 

IngersoU, R., on Hebrew death pen- 
alty, 125. 

Inspiration, old and new views con- 
cerning, 5 ff., 12, 372. See Bible. 

Isaiah, protests against policy of 
Ahaz, 335 ; his character and mes- 
sage, 347, 350, 368; cf. 335, 336 n. ; 
the caU of, 365. 

Isaiah, the Second. See Crreat Un- 
known. 

Israel. See Hebrew People. 

Jahvist narrative, 35. 

James, William, The Will to Believe, 
quoted, 102 n. 

Jameson, Mrs., History of Our Lord 
in Art, 61 n. 

Jaaher, Book of, 7n., 36. 

Jehovah, subject of Hebrew history, 
47. See also, God. 

Jehu, Book of, 36. 

Jeremiah, 348, 350, 368. 

Jesus, birthplace of, 42. See also, 
Christ. 

Job, Book of, characterized, 6 ; inter- 
preted, 229 ff. ; date of, 233 ; genius 
of the author of, 236 ; story of, 
240 ff . ; and agnosticism, 260 ; con- 
clusion of, 262 ; prophetic, 267. 

Joel, 350, 351. 

Jonah, the story of, 192 ; the teaching 
of, 350, 351. 

Josephus, Antiquities, 92 n., 192 n. 

"Judges," Hebrew, 116. 

Kellogg, S. H., Book of Leviticus, 

quoted, 132 n. 
Kent, C. F., Wise Men, 231n., 268 n. 
King, Hebrew, limited power of, 

124ff. 
Kings, Book of, 32. 
Kitto, Bible lllus., 50 n. 
Koran, contrasted with Pentateuch, 

83; source for legends concerning 

Moses, 93 n. 

Lane, E. W., Selections from the 
Kur-an, 93 n. 

Lange, Com/inentary, 60 n. 

Law, and national life, 83 ff. ; ground 
for authority of, 107 ; belief concern- 
ing divine origin of, 81, 379, 



406 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Law, Hebrew, elements in growth of, 
91 ; Deuteronomic code of, 116 ff ; 
provisions of, 124 ff. ; canon law, 129 
ff. ; spirit of, 343. 

Laws of nature. Biblical writers igno- 
rant of, 15. 

Lawgivers, compared with prophets, 
342. See also, 263. 

LegaUst, 263. 

Legend, in the Bible, 64 ff., 378; in 
other literatures, 70 ff. ; compared 
with myth, 75 ff. See also. Folk- 
lore. 

Lenormant, Beginnings of History, 
53 n. ; quoted, 58 n. 

Levitical code, 130 ff. ; unlike pagan 
code, 152 ff. ; support voluntary, 
152 ; services voluntary, 154 ; inex- 
pensive, 155 ; not to pacify God, 
158 ; self-destructive, 160. See Rit- 
ual. 

Levitical system, date of, 148. 

Leviticus, date of, 83. 

Liny, W. S., Century of Revolution, 
109 n. 

Literature, forms of, 201 ff. See also, 
BiUe. 

Lyric, meaning of term, 307 ; in the 
Bible, 378. 

Mabie, H. W., Essays on Nature and 

Culture, quoted, 312. 
McCurdy, J. F., History, PropJiecy, 

and the Monuments, 99 n. 
McGiffert, A. C, Apostolic Age, 17 n. 
Magruder, A. B., John Marshall, 85. 
Maine, Sir H., Ancient Law, quoted, 

88 n., 108 n. Popular Government, 

109 n. 
Malachi, 349, 351. 
Man, message of Israel concerning, 

383 ff . ; relationship of God and, 

384 ff. 

Messiah. See Promise. 

Micah, 347, 350, 367. 

Miller, H., Testimony of the Rocks, 

56 n. 
Miller, J., on Proverbs, 270 n. 
Miracles. See Laws of Nature. 
Moore, G. F., on Deuteronomy, 120 n. ; 

on Judges, quoted, 173 n., 175 n. 
Moral teachers, three classes of, 263 ff. 
Morison, Service of Man, quoted, 

303, 384, and n. 
Morley, J., Rousseau, 109 n. 
Moses, reputed author of Genesis, 54, 

81, 82 ; life and character of, 91 ff . ; 

and the prophets, 342. 
Moulton, R. G., Modem Reader'' s 

Bible, 17 n. ; quoted, 201 n., 256 n., 

270 n., 287 n. 
Munhall, L. W., Anti-Higher Criti- 
cism, 53 n. 
Myth, 76 ff., 378. 



Nahum, 348, 350. 

Narratives, priestly and prophetic, 34. 
Nathan, Samuel and God, Acts of, 36. 
Nation, conception of, in Psalms, 36. 
Nature in the Psalms, 318 ff. 
Newman, J. H., Apologia pro Vita 

Sua, 298; Grammar of Assent, 

quoted, 352. 

Obadiah, 348, 350. 

Omar Khayyam, quoted, 296. 

Old Testament. See Bible. 

Oort, Dr. H., Bible for Learners, 
quoted, 92 n. 

Orelli, C. von. Old Testament Pro- 
phecies, 359 n. ; Prophecies of Jere- 
miah, 147 n. 

Owen, J., Five Great Sceptical Dra- 
mas, 230; quoted, 258 n. 

Pagan nations compared with Hebrew 
people, 381. See also, Egypt. 

Palmer, E. H., Desert of the Exodus, 
quoted, 101 n. 

Parable in the Bible, 170. 

Parable of the Trees, 170. 

Paul, teaching of, compared with Wis- 
dom Literature, 258 ; compared with 
Proverbs, 285. See also, 342. 

Pentateuch, authorship of, 54 n. 

Peters, J. P., Scriptures Hebrew and 
Christian, 38 n. 

Philosophy and myth, 78 ; dramatic, 
23; Hebrew, 363 ff . 

Plato, quoted, 76, 77. 

Plumptre, on Ecclesiastes, 287 n., 
291 n. 

Plutarch, Morals, quoted, 320. 

Poetry, essentials of, 308. See also. 
Lyric. 

Poets compared with prophets, 342 ff . 

Polychrome Bible, quoted, 7n., 36 n., 
346 n. ; translations from, 335, 365, 
368. 

Priest. See Levitical Code. 

Promise, note of, in Hebrew litera- 
ture, 356, 389. 

Prophecy, interpretation of Hebrew, 
328 ff., 352 ff. ; Messianic, 356 ff. 

Prophet, Hebrew, view of the, 264; 
contrasted with "Wise Men, 272 ; 
function of, 328 ; interpretation of, 
328 ff. ; as foreteller, 331 ; rabbini- 
cal conception of the work of, 334 ; 
commissioned by Jehovah, 338 ; the 
times of, 339 ; the personality of, 
341 ; compared with other Hebrew 
teachers, 342 ff . ; conception of God 
expressed by, 350, 351. 

Proverbs, Book of, empirical, 268; 
authorship of, 269 ; collection of 
aphorisms, 270 ; no references to 
Mosaic or Levitical code in, 271 ; 
no theology in, 271 ; contrast with 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



407 



prophetic method, 272 ; wisdom as 
presented in, 274; aphorisms in, 
276; odes, riddles, etc., in, 277 ; no 
system of ethics in, 279 ; not distinc- 
tive by Hebraic, 282 ; not cynical, 
283 ; compared with counsel of 
Christ and Paul, 284 ff. 

Proverbs, national, characterized and 
cited, 280 ff. 

Psalms, Hebrew, interpretation of, 
305 ff . ; authors of, 305 ff . ; the five 
books of, 306 ; religious character 
of, 307 ff. ; expressions of experience, 
312 ff. ; Christ and the imprecatory, 
315 ; conception of God in, 316 ; 
conception of the nation in, 318 ff., 
321 ; Christ and the, 325 ff. 

Punishment, divine, 237 ff. 

Pusey, E. B., Minor Prophets, 192 n., 
quoted, 360. 

RawUnson, History of Egypt, 95, 99 n., 
104n., 105n., 141n.,153n. 

Raymond, R. W., Book of Job, 234n. 

Religion, in other than Hebrew na- 
tions, 139 ; primitive, 237 ; Hebrew 
conception of, 352 ; forelooking 
character of Hebrew, 353. 

Renan, E., History of Israel, 29 n. ; 
quoted, 92 n. ; translation in Job, 
253 n. 

Revelation, old and new view concern- 
ing, 12. See Inspiration. 

Rewards, divine, 237 ff. 

Rhys, E., Book of Ruth, quoted, 182 n. 

Riehm, Messianic Prophecy, 359 n. 

Ritual, Hebrew, growth of, 141. See 
also, Levitical Code. 

Romance, in the Bible, historical, 
183 ; satirical, 192. 

Ruskin, Modern Painters, 60 n. 

Ruth, story of, 177. 

Ruth, Book of, date of, 178 and n. 

Sacrifices, Hebrew and pagan con- 
trasted, 162 ; use of, 387 ; not regu- 
lated by Moses, 147. 

Samson, story of, 172 ff . 

Samuel concerning the Kingdom, Book 
of, 36. 

Satan. See Adversary. 

Sayings of the Seers, 36. 

Schaff, P., General Introduction in 
Lange^s Commentary on Job, 
quoted, 60 n, 

Schaff-Herzog, Religious Encyclope- 
dia, quoted, 6n. 

Scriptures, use of term, 1. See also, 
Bible. 

Shakespeare, quoted, 291 n. 

Shemaiah the Prophet, Book of, 36. 

" Shulamite," meaning of, 206 n. 

Silliman, Outline of Geological Lec- 
tures, quoted, 61 n. 



Smith, George, Chaldean Account of 
Genesis, 53n. 

Smith, G. A., Book of Isaiah, 17 n., 
336 n., 346 n.; Book of the Twelve 
Prophets, 147 n. ; quoted, 192 n., 
quoted, 328, 346 n. 

Smith, William, Dictionary of the 
Bible, 125 n., 192 n. 

Smith, W. R., Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica, 178 n., Old Testament in Jew- 
ish Church, 102 n. 

Stowe, C. E., on Jonah, 192 n. 

Solomon, one of the makers of pro- 
verbs, 269; not author of Ecclesi- 
astes, 288; character of, 289 ff. 

Solomon, Acts of, 36. 

Solomon, Book of, 36. 

Songs, ancient, 36. 

Song of Songs, conceptions of, 201 n. ; 
dramatic story of, 206 ; lesson of, 
for present time, 227 ; an allegory, 
228. 

Spinoza, on Mosaic authorship of Pen- 
tateuch, 54 n. 

Stanley, A. P., History of the Jewish 
Church, quoted, 8 n., 19 n., 93 n., 
102 n., 287 n. ; quoted, 291 n. 

State. See Nation. 

Stevens, G. B., Theology of the New 
Testament, quoted, 25 n. 

Strabo, quoted, 96. 

Suffering, significance of, 237 ff . 

"Suffermg Servant," 358, 368. See 
also. Great Unknown. 

Symbolism, language of, 208, 218, 222. 

Symonds, J. A., Renaissance in Italy, 
39 ; Greek Poets, 308 n. 

Taine, French Revolution, 109 n. 

Tatian, Diatesseron, 34. 

Taylor, H. O., Ancient Ideals, qaoteA, 
390 n. 

Temple, rebuilding of, 27. See also, 
Levitical Code. 

Tennyson, In 3femoriam, quoted, 262. 

Thackeray, The Newcomes, quoted, 
204. 

Theology, Old and New contrasted, 11, 
cf . iv. See Bible and Inspiration. 

Townsend, G., Old Testament Ar- 
ranged, quoted, 233 n. 

Toy, C. H., on Proverbs, 279 n. 

Tradition, in Hebrew literature, 38. 
See also. Folk-lore, Legend, and 
Myth. 

Traditions regarding authorship of 
Biblical books, 22 ff . 

Tribes, the Lost, 363 n. 

TrumbuU, H. C, Light on the Story of 
Jonah, 192 n. 

Truth, fact and, 41. 

Tuck, R., Handbook of Biblical Diffi- 
culties, 8n., 50n. 



408 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



"Wars of the Lord, Book of the, 36. 

WellhauBen, on the Pentateuch, 53 n. ; 
History of Israel, 102 n. and ff. ; 
quoted, 116 n. , quoted, 129 n. 

Wescott, History of Religious Thought, 
77n., 78n. 

Westminster Confession of Faith, 4 
and n. ; quoted, 6 n., 372. 

WiUdnson, Sir J. G., Ancient Egyp- 
tians, 99 n. 

Wisdom, as presented in Proverbs, 
274. 



Wisdom Literature, interpreted, 229, 
263 ; conclusion of, 258. 

Wise Men, constituting a school of 
thought, 268 ; compared with pro- 
phets, 342. 

Woods, F. H., Hope of Israel, 359 n. 

Xerxes, character of, 183. 

Zechariah, 349, 351. 
Zephaniah, 347, 350- 



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EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

By LYMAN ABBOTT 



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Treats the Old Testament as a development of the religious insti- 
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THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THE APOSTLE 
PAUL 

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THE THEOLOGY OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 

Restates Christian theology in the terms of an evolutionary phi- 
losophy. {^1.25. 



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